UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
AT   LOS  ANGELES 


18 


LETTERS  FROM  AN  OLD 
RAILWAY  OFFICIAL 

TO  HIS  SON,  A  DIVISION    SUPERINTENDENT 


BY 

Charles  DeLano  Hine 

WITH    A    POSTSCRIPT     BY 
FRANK    H.   SPEARMAN 


CHICAGO 

THE  RAILWAY  AGE 

1904 


COPTEIGHT,  1904, 

B^  Charles  DeLano  Hike 


HE" 


To  the  railway  oiJicials  and  employes  of 
America: 

Their  intelligence  is  an  inspiration;  their 

steadfastness,  a  psalm. 


2tmri'34 


FILE   NUMBERS. 


LETTER  I. 
A  Word  of  Congratulation i 

LETTER  IL 
Helping   the   Train   Dispatchers 6 

LETTER  in. 
Handling  a  Yard 13 

LETTER  IV. 
Distant   Signals   on    Chief   Clerks 18 

LETTER  V. 
Safety  of  Trains  in  Yards 26 

LETTER  VI. 
Standardizing   Administration    31 

LETTER  VII. 
The  New  Trainmaster  and  Civil  Service 36 

LETTER  VIII. 
Education  of  Several   Kinds 43 

LETTER  IX. 
Correspondence  and  Telegrams 49 

LETTER  X. 
The   Bayonet  Precedes  the  Gospel 56 

LETTER  XL 
Preventing  Wrecks   Before  They  Happen 63 

LETTER  XII. 
The  Self-Made  Man  Who  Worships  His  M'aker 70 


LETTER  XIII. 
The  Friend-Mile  as  a  Unit  of  Measure 79 

LETTER  XIV. 
The  Management  that  Breeds  from  Its  Own  Herd..  8g 

LETTER  XV. 
More   on   Civil    Service 97 

LETTER  XVI. 
The    Supply    Train 104 

LETTER  XVII. 
What  the  Big  Engine  Has  Cost 114 

LETTER  XVIH. 
Be  a  Superintendent — Not  a  Nurse 121 

LETTER  XIX. 
The  Rack  of  the  Comparative   Statement 130 

LETTER  XX. 
Handling  the   Pay-Roil 137 

LETTER  XXL 
Military    Organization    145 

LETTER  XXII. 
Wrecks  and  Block  Signals 153 

LETTER  XXIII. 
Unionism   161 

LETTER  XXIV. 
The   Round-Up   i6g 

POSTSCRIPT. 
By  Frank  H.  Spearman 177 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official 


LETTER    I. 

A    WORD    OF    CONGRATULATION. 

March  20,  1904. 

My  Dear  Boy: — The  circular  announcing 
your  appointment  as  division  superintendent 
has  just  been  received,  and  it  brings  up  a  flood 
of  thoughts  of  former  years.  I  felt  that  you 
had  made  a  mistake  in  leaving  us  to  go  with 
the  new  system,  but  it  has  turned  out  all  right. 
I  can  appreciate  the  fact  that  you  would 
rather  work  away  from  me,  so  as  to  make 
people  believe  that  you  can  go  up  the  official 
hill  without  having  a  pusher  behind  you. 

This  should  be  one  of  the  proudest  periods 
of  your  life.  You  are  now  in  a  position  to 
do  good  to  your  company,  to  your  fellow 
man,  and  incidentally  to  yourself.  No  matter 
how  highly  organized  a  road  may  be,  the  im- 
portance of  the  office  of  division  superinten- 
dent is  in  direct  proportion  to  the  ability  and 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

earnestness  of  the  incumbent.  The  position 
is  little  or  big,  restricted  or  untrammeled,  just 
as  you  make  it.  Many  a  superintendent  has 
had  to  double  the  hill  of  a  swelled  knob,  and 
run  as  a  last  section  into  the  next  promo- 
tion terminal.  You  have  too  much  of  your 
mother's  good  sense  ever  to  cause  anybody 
else  to  put  up  signals  for  you  on  this  account. 
Therefore  do  not  lose  your  democratic  man- 
ner. Keep  your  heart  warm  and  regard  the 
wider  field  as  an  opportunity  to  get  more 
friends  on  your  staff.  Try  to  call  every  em- 
ploye in  your  territory  by  name,  as  Caesar 
did  his  soldiers;  for  all  the  traffic  of  good- 
will must  run  in  a  direction  toward  you  if  you 
want  maximum  results,  as  they  call  efficiency 
nowadays.  Good  old  rule  121  of  the  standard 
code  says :  "When  in  doubt  take  the  safe 
course  and  run  no  risks,''  which,  in  the  case 
of  acquaintance,  means  if  uncertain  whether 
you  know  a  man  or  not,  speak  to  him  and 
give  him  the  glad  hand  anyway.  You  will 
have  to  discipline  men,  but  that  can  be  done 
without  parting  company  with  your  good 
manners.  Remember  that  the  much-abused 
word  "discipline"  comes  from  the  same  root 
as  the  word  "disciple,"  a  pupil,  a  learner,  a 
2 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

follower.     It  is  always   easier  to  lead  men 
than  to  drive  them. 

When  you  go  over  the  division  do  not  try 
to  see  how  many  telegrams  you  can  send, 
but  how  few.  It  is  usually  a  pretty  safe  rule 
after  writing  a  telegram  on  the  hind  end  of  a 
train  to  carry  it  by  two  or  three  stations  to 
see  if  you  would  rather  not  take  it  back  to 
the  office  yourself.  The  dispatchers  used  to 
tell  your  old  dad  that  they  couldn't  have  told 
he  was  out  on  the  line  as  far  as  his  messages 
were  an  indication.  Another  thing,  do  not 
try  to  plug  your  whistle  and  mufHe  your  bell. 
Let  everybody  know  you  are  coming.  The 
*''01d  Sleuth"  stunt  is  for  criminals,  not  for 
honest  employes.  Be  on  hand  so  frequently 
that  your  coming  is  taken  as  a  matter  of 
course.  Never  hunt  quail  with  a  brass  band, 
but  bear  in  mind  that  men,  unlike  quail,  rather 
like  to  perch  on  a  band  wagon.  If  you  are 
tempted  to  wait  behind  box  cars  to  see  if 
the  men  on  a  night  pony  have  gone  in  the 
hay,  do  not  yield,  but  get  out,  see  that  the 
switches  are  lined  up,  and  count  the  ties  in 
front  of  the  headlight  until  somebody  gives 
her  steam ;  just  as  Napoleon  walked  post  for 
the  sleeping  sentinel.    Then,  if  you  administer 

3 


Letters  From  A  R.a.ilway  Official. 

a  polite  jacking  up  it  will  be  twice  as  ef- 
fective, even  if  the  delay  to  the  work  that 
one  time  has  continued.  Remember  that 
things  aire  not  as  they  should  be,  and  it  is 
probably  your  own  fault  if,  under  normal  con- 
ditions, a  particular  movement  depends  upon 
your  personal  efforts.  Any  routine  action 
that  you  take  should  be  calculated  to  help 
many  trains,  or  one  train  many  times ;  or  to 
help  many  men,  not  merely  the  trains  or  men 
in  question.  It  is  all  right,  in  emergencies, 
to  jump  in  and  do  the  work  of  a  conductor, 
of  an  engineman,  of  a  switch  tender,  or  of  any 
other  employe.  The  great  trouble  is  in  dis- 
criminating between  an  emergency  and  a  de- 
fect which  can  better  be  remedied  in  some 
other  way.  The  smaller  the  caliber  of  the 
official  the  more  numerous  the  emergencies 
to  his  mind. 

You  should  try  to  arrange  your  work  so  as 
to  stay  up  all  night  at  least  once  a  week, 
either  in  the  ofifice,  or  better,  on  the  road  or 
in  the  yards.  You  will  keep  better  in  touch 
with  the  men  and  the  things  for  which  you, 
asleep  or  awake,  are  always  responsible.  You 
remember  when  your  sister  Lucy  was  little 
how  we  asked  her  why  she  said  her  prayers 

4 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

at  night  but  usually  omitted  them  in  the 
morning.  Her  answer  which  so  tickled  you 
was,  "I  ask  God  to  take  care  of  me  at  night, 
but  I  can  take  care  of  myself  in  the  daytime." 
It  is  much  the  same  way  with  a  railroad. 
I'Yom  your  point  of  view  it  will  take  pretty 
fair  care  of  itself  as  a  daylight  job,  but  at 
night  that  proposition  loses  its  rights.  The 
youngest  dispatcher,  by  virtue  of  being  the 
senior  representative  awake,  is  to  a  certain 
extent  general  manager.  The  least  experi- 
enced men  are  in  the  yards  and  roundhouses. 
The  ever-faithful  sectionmen  are  off  the  right 
of  way.  The  car  inspector's  light  and  the 
engineman's  torch  are  poor  substitutes  for 
the  sun  in  locating  defects.  The  most  active 
brains  are  dulled  by  the  darkness  just  before 
dawn.  Then  it  is  that  a  brief  hour  may  side- 
track or  derail  the  good  work  of  many  days. 
It  is  this  responsibility,  this  struggle  with  na- 
ture, this  helping  God  to  work  out  the  good 
in  men,  that  makes  our  profession  noble  and 
develops  qualities  of  greatness  in  its  mem- 
bers. 

Next  time  I  shall  try  to  tell  you  something 
about  helping  your  train  dispatchers. 

With  a  father's  blessing,  ever  your  own, 

'  D.  A.  D. 
5 


LETTER    II. 

HELPING   THE   TRAIN    DISPATCHERS. 

March  27,  1904. 
My  Dear  Boy: — I  promised  in  my  last  to 
say  something  about  helping  your  train  dis- 
patchers. The  way  to  help  any  man  is  first 
to  encourage  him  and  by  showing  that  you 
appreciate  his  good  qualities  give  him  confi- 
dence in  himself.  When  you  come  in  off  the 
road  tell  the  dispatcher,  if  such  be  the  case, 
"Nice  meeting  point  you  made  yesterday  for 
15  and  16;  I  w^as  there  and  they  both  kept 
moving  almost  like  double  track."  If  your 
division  has  been  badly  handled,  the  dis- 
patcher, unaccustomed  to  such  appreciation, 
will  at  first  think  this  is  a  sarcastic  prelude 
to  having  the  harpoon  thrown  into  him ;  but 
your  sincerity  will  soon  disabuse  his  mind  of 
such  a  notion.  Sarcasm  in  official  intercourse 
or  toward  one's  subordinates  should  never  be 
tolerated.  It  is  an  expensive  kind  of  extra 
that  should  never  be  run.  When  you  praise 
a  man  it  will  add  to  his  good  feeling  if  some 
6 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

one  else  happens  to  be  present.  If  you  have 
to  censure  anyone,  whether  directly  or 
through  the  channels,  do  it  privately  and 
spare  the  recipient  all  unnecessary  humilia- 
tion. The  official  who  remembers  to  mention 
good  work  will  find  his  rebukes  and  criti- 
cisms much  more  effective  in  remedying  poor 
work  than  the  official  whose  theory  and  prac- 
tice are  to  take  up  failures  and  to  let  successes 
be  taken  for  granted. 

Another  way  to  help  a  man  is  to  lead  him 
away  from  the  pitfalls  that  are  peculiar  to  his 
path  of  work.  The  official  who  is  an  old  dis- 
patcher has  to  fight  in  himself  the  tempta- 
tion to  be  the  whole  cheese.  He  has  to  learn 
to  trust  subordinates  with  details.  Every  po- 
sition entails  some  inherent  temptations.  The 
absolute,  unquestioned  authority  given  a  dis- 
patcher in  train  movements  breeds  a  tempta- 
tion to  be  autocratic  and  unreasonable,  to  put 
out  too  many  orders,  to  give  too  many  in- 
structions. Therefore,  try  to  get  your  dis- 
patchers in  touch  with  your  crews.  If  the 
former  are  in  a  skyscraper  uptown,  get  au- 
thority to  build  an  office  for  them  at  the  termi- 
nal where  most  of  the  crews  live.  Personal 
contact   is  much   better  than   long-distance 

7 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

communication  by  wire.  There  is  enough  of 
the  latter  from  the  very  nature  of  the  busi- 
ness without  causing  an  unnecessary  amount 
by  artificial  conditions. 

The  temptation  of  a  legislator  is  to  make 
too  many  laws;  of  a  doctor  to  prescribe  too 
much  medicine;  of  an  old  man  to  give  too 
much  advice;  and  of  a  train  dispatcher,  once 
more,  to  put  out  too  many  orders.  It  used  to 
be  thought  by  some  that  the  best  dispatcher 
was  the  one  who  put  out  the  most  orders. 
The  later  and  better  idea  is  that,  generally 
speaking,  the  best  dispatcher  puts  out  the 
fewest  orders.  It  is  always  easier  to  give 
orders  of  any  kind  than  it  is  to  execute  them. 
It  is  a  far  cry  from  an  O.  S.  on  a  train  sheet 
to  getting  a  heavy  drag  into  a  sidetrack  and 
out  again.  It  often  takes  longer  to  stop  a 
train  and  get  an  order  signed  and  completed 
than  the  additional  time  given  in  the  order 
amounts  to.  Even  a  judicious  use  of  the  be- 
neficent nineteen  order  involves  more  or  less 
delay.  One  of  the  lessons  a  dispatcher  has  to 
learn  is  to  know  when  he  is  up  against  it; 
when  he  has  figured  badly ;  and  when  not  to 
make  a  bad  matter  worse  by  vainly  trying  to 
retrieve  a  hopeless  delay.  A  good  dispatcher 
8 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

will  know  without  being  told  that  he  has 
made  a  poor  meeting  point.  Educate  him  to 
consider  that  as  an  error  to  be  avoided  under 
like  conditions  in  the  future;  not  as  a  mistake 
to  be  made  worse  by  putting  out  more  orders 
that  may  fail  to  help  the  stabbed  train 
enough,  and  may  result  in  having  every  fel- 
low on  the  road  delayed.  If  any  train  must 
be  delayed,  let  it  be  one  that  is  already  late 
rather  than  one  that  is  on  time.  Above  all 
get  the  confidence  of  your  dispatchers  so  that 
they  will  not  try  to  cover  up  their  own  mis- 
takes or  those  of  others.  Teach  them  that, 
in  the  doubtful  event  of  its  becoming  neces- 
sary, the  superintendent  is  able  to  do  the 
covering  up  act  for  the  whole  division. 

Every  superintendent  and  higher  ofificial 
should  remember  that  if  the  same  train  order 
is  given  every  day  there  must  be  something 
radically  wrong  with  the  time  table.  All  over 
this  broad  land,  day  after  day,  hundreds  of 
unnecessary  train  orders  are  being  sent  be- 
cause many  time  tables  are  constructed  on  the 
models  of  forty  years  ago.  At  that  time,  in 
fact  as  in  name,  there  were  two  classes  of 
trains,  passenger  and  freight.  To-day  there 
are  in  reality  at  least  two  distinct  classes  of 

9 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

passenger  trains  and  two  classes  of  freights, 
or  at  least  four  in  all.  On  most  of  the  roads 
in  the  country  passenger  trains  of  whatever 
nature  or  importance  are  all  shown  in  one 
class,  the  first.  As  a  result  every  limited 
train  in  the  inferior  direction  on  single  track 
has  to  be  given  right  by  train  order  over  op- 
posing local  passenger  trains  in  the  superior 
direction.  In  other  words,  the  working  time 
table,  by  definition  a  general  law,  has  no  more 
practical  value,  as  between  such  trains,  than 
an  advertising  folder.  A  train  order  by  its 
very  nature  is  an  exception  to  the  general  law, 
the  time  table.  When  the  exception  becomes 
the  rule  it  is  high  time  to  head  in  or  to  put 
out  a  thinking  flag.  Some  years  ago  your 
old  dad  after  much  persuasion  induced  his 
superiors  to  let  him  make  four  classes  of 
trains  on  a  pretty  warm  piece  of  single  track. 
The  result  directly  and  indirectly  was  to  re- 
duce the  number  of  train  orders  by  twenty 
or  twenty-five  per  day.  Every  train  order 
given  increases  the  possibility  of  mistake  and 
disaster;  the  fewer  the  orders  the  safer  the 
operation.  The  change  was  made  without 
even  an  approach  to  a  mistake  or  the  sem- 
blance of  disaster.    The  dispatchers  being  less 

10 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official, 

occupied  were  able  to  give  more  attention  to 
local  freights,  and  the  general  efficiency  of  the 
train  service  was  greatly  increased.  The 
wires  could  go  down  and  the  most  important 
trains  would  keep  moving.  It  has  stood  the 
test  of  years  and  if  the  old  method  were  re- 
sumed a  grievance  committee  would  probably 
wait  on  the  management. 

Successful  politicians  and  public  speakers 
have  long  since  learned  not  to  disgust  their 
hearers  by  trying  to  talk  in  language  ridicu- 
lously simple  and  uncultured.  For  us  to  say 
that  the  intelligent  employes  of  to-day  cannot 
keep  in  mind  four  or  even  five  classes  of 
trains  is  to  confuse  them  with  the  compara- 
tively illiterate  men  of  a  bygone  generation. 
The  public  school  and  the  daily  newspaper 
have  made  a  part  of  our  problem  easier.  We 
are  paying  higher  wages  than  ever  before,  but 
is  it  not  partly  our  own  fault  if  we  fail  to 
get  full  value  received? 

Therefore,  see  if  your  time  tables  appeal  to 
tradition  or  to  reason ;  if  they  belong  to  a  pe- 
riod when  women  wore  hoopskirts,  or  to  a 
time  when  women  ride  wheels  and  play  golf. 
In  brief,  before  you  take  the  stylus  to  remove 
the  dirt  ballast  from  the  dispatcher's  eye,  be 
II 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

sure  that  there  are  no  brakebeams  stuck  in 
your  own  headlight. 

Affectionately,  your  own 

D.  A.  D. 


12 


LETTER    III. 

HANDLING  A  YARD. 

April  3,  1904. 

My  Dear  Boy: — You  have  asked  me  to 
give  you  some  pointers  on  handling  a  yard. 
You  will  find  that  nearly  all  situations  in  a 
yard  hark  back  to  one  simple  rule,  which  is: 
When  you  get  hold  of  a  car  move  it  as  far  as 
possible  toward  its  final  destination  before 
you  let  go  of  it. 

The  training  of  a  switchman  is  usually  such 
that,  if  let  alone,  he  will  stick  the  car  in  the 
first  convenient  track  and  wait  to  make  a  de- 
livery until  he  can  pull  every  track  in  the  yard 
and  put  with  it  all  other  cars  with  the  same 
cards  or  marks.  By  this  time  some  other 
fellow  with  a  similar  honesty  of  purpose  but 
differently  applied  will  come  along  and  bury 
the  car  or  block  the  first  man  in  so  that  one 
engine  has  to  stand  idle.  A  3'ardmaster  has 
to  learn  to  keep  his  engines  scattered  and  to 
hold  each  foreman  responsible  for  the  work  of 
an   engine.     A  good  yardmaster  knows  in- 

13 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

stinctively  where  to  be  at  a  certain  time  to 
minimize  the  delay  incident  to  engines  bunch- 
ing. The  old  switchman  who  becomes  a  yard- 
master  often  proves  a  failure  because  he  can- 
not overcome  his  inclination  to  follow  one 
engine  and  take  a  hand  in  the  switching  him- 
self. By  so  doing  he  may  perhaps  increase 
the  work  accomplished  by  that  one  engine, 
possibly  five  per  cent ;  but  in  the  meantime  the 
other  engines,  for  want  of  comprehensive,  in- 
telligent instructions,  are  getting  in  each  oth- 
er's way  and  the  efficiency  of  the  day's  service 
is  decreased  maybe  twenty  per  cent. 

Good  yardmasters  are  even  harder  to  dis- 
cover or  develop  than  good  train  dispatchers. 
The  exposure,  the  irregular  hours  for  the 
yardmasters  meals  in  even  the  best  regulated 
yards  make  a  good  conductor  leery  about  giv- 
ing up  a  comfortable  run  to  assume  the  in- 
creased responsibility  of  a  yard.  The  pay  of 
a  yardmaster  is  little  more  than  that  of  a 
conductor  and  is  sometimes  less.  Right  here 
is  a  chance  for  some  deep  administrative 
thought.  It  is  so  much  easier  to  get  good 
conductors  than  good  yardmasters,  should  we 
not  make  the  latter  position  more  attractive? 
Some  roads  have  done  this  by  making  it  one 

14 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official, 

of  the  positions  from  which  to  promote  train- 
masters, and  seldom  have  such  appointees 
fallen  down.  However,  there  are  hardly 
enoiigh  promotion  loaves  and  fishes  to  go 
around.  Men  get  tired  of  living  on  skimmed 
milk  on  earth  for  the  sake  of  promised  cream 
in  heaven.  Every  switch  engine  worked  costs 
the  company  several  hundred  dollars  per 
month,  and  the  yardmaster  whose  good  figur- 
ing can  save  working  even  one  engine  is  more 
than  earning  his  salary. 

The  closer  you  can  get  your  yardmasters 
to  your  official  family  the  better  your  adminis- 
tration. Pick  up  a  yardmaster  occasionally 
and  take  him  to  headquarters  with  you  so  that 
he  will  keep  acquainted  with  the  dispatchers. 
This  will  hold  down  friction  and  save  the 
company's  good  money,  A  dispatcher  natur- 
ally wants  to  get  all  the  trains  he  can  Into  a 
terminal,  while  a  yardmaster  is  doing  his  level 
best  to  get  trains  out.  With  such  radically 
different  points  of  professional  view  there  is 
a  big  opportunity  for  the  superintendent  and 
the  trainmaster  to  do  the  harmonizing  act,  to 
keep  pleasantly  before  employes  the  fact  that 
all  are  working  for  the  same  company,  that  all 
do  business  with  the  same  paymaster.   Blessed 

15 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

are  the  peacemakers  doesn't  mean  iiecessarily 
there  must  first  be  trouble.  Peace  carried  in 
stock  is  better  than  that  manufactured  on 
hurry-up  shop  orders. 

If  you  are  looking  for  talent  to  run  a  yard, 
consider  some  ambitious  dispatcher.  Too 
few  dispatchers  have  become  yardmasters. 
The  same  cool  head,  the  same  quick  judg- 
ment, the  same  executive  ability  are  needed 
in  both  positions.  The  man  who  has  success- 
fully filled  both  is  usually  equipped  to  go 
against  almost  any  old  official  job,  without 
having  to  back  up  and  take  a  nm  for  the  hill. 
The  curse  of  modern  civilization  is  over- 
specialization.  The  world  grows  better  and 
produces  stronger,  better  men  all  the  while. 
Perhaps  this  is  in  spite  of  rather  than  on  ac- 
count of  highly  specialized  organization.  No 
industry  can  afTord  to  be  without  the  old- 
fashioned  all  around  man  who  is  good  any- 
where you  put  him. 

The  work  of  the  yardmaster  is  more  spec- 
tacular than  that  of  the  dispatcher.  To  come 
down  to  a  congested  yard  among  a  lot  of 
discouraged  men  blocked  in  without  room  to 
sidetrack  a  handcar  is  like  sitting  down  to  a 
train  sheet  with  most  of  the  trains  tied  up 
i6 


Letters  From  A  R.\il\vay  Official. 

for  orders.  In  either  case  let  the  right  man 
take  hold  and  in  a  few  minutes  the  men  in- 
volved will  tell  you  who  it  is  has  assumed 
charge.  Without  realizing  it  and  without 
knowing  why,  they  redouble  their  efforts; 
things  begin  to  move,  and  the  incident  goes 
down  in  the  legends  of  the  division  to  be  the 
talk  of  the  caboose  and  the  roundhouse  for 
years  to  come.  To  the  man  whose  cool  head 
and  earnestness  are  bringing  it  all  about 
comes  the  almost  unconscious  exhilaration 
that  there  is  in  leading  reinforcements  to  the 
firing  line.  He  feels  with  the  Count  of  Monte 
Cristo,  "The  world  is  mine,"  I  have  the 
switches  set  to  head  it  in. 

Get  out  of  your  head  the  young  brakeman's 
idea  that  yard  jobs  are  for  old  women  and 
hasbeens. 

Affectionately,  your  own 

D.  A.  D. 


17 


LETTER    IV. 

DISTANT  SIGNALS  ON   CHIEF  CLERKS. 

April  10,  1904. 
My  Dear  Boy : — You  write  me  that  you  have 
been  kept  very  much  in  your  office  of  late 
because  the  general  superintendent  has  taken 
your  chief  clerk  for  the  same  position  in  his 
own  office.  You  hope  that  your  friend,  the 
auditor,  may  be  able  to  furnish  you  a  good 
man  who  has  such  a  thorough  knowledge  of 
accounts  that  you  will  be  able  to  give  less 
attention  to  such  matters  and  therefore  be 
out  on  the  road  that  much  more.  You  will 
pardon  a  father's  severity,  but  you  are  run- 
ning on  bad  track,  and  my  interest  prompts 
me  to  put  out  a  slow  order  for  you.  You  have 
had  the  division  a  short  time,  it  is  true,  but 
that  is  only  a  partial  excuse  for  not  having 
better  organization  than  your  letter  unwit- 
tingly admits.  You  have  been  there  long 
enough  to  have  sized  up  the  men  on  the  di- 
vision, and  you  should  know  wdiere  to  put 
your  hand  on  a  man  for  practically  any  posi- 
18 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

tion..  A  good  organizer  does  not  wait  for  a 
vacancy  to  occur  or  even  come  in  sight  be- 
fore thinking  of  the  next  incumbent.  He  is 
always  into  clear  on  such  a  proposition.  He 
has  thought  it  all  out  beforehand.  He  has  in 
mind  two  or  three  available  men  for  every 
possible  vacancy  that  can  occur,  for  every 
job  on  the  pike,  including  his  own.  Wher- 
ever possible  by  judicious  changing  of  men  he 
not  only  has  a  man  in  mind,  but  he  has  given 
him  some  preliminary  training  for,  perhaps 
some  actual  experience  in,  the  position  to  be 
permanently  filled. 

The  tone  of  your  letter  is  half  complaining 
because  the  general  superintendent  has  taken 
your  good  chief  clerk.  Away  with  such  a 
feeling;  it  is  unworthy.  You  should  feel  flat- 
tered that  your  division  had  a  chance  to  fill 
the  vacancy.  You  should  rejoice  in  the  ad- 
vancement of  your  faithful  subordinate.  Some 
divisions,  like  some  officials,  are  known  the 
country  over  as  developers  of  talent. 

Youth  is  proverbially  quick,  and  I  think 
sometimes  that  you  youngsters  are  quicker  at 
getting  into  a  rut  than  are  we  old  fogies.  Why 
for  a  chief  clerk  must  you  necessarily  have  a 
man  with  office  experience?    Does  it  not  oc- 

19 


Letters  From  A  R.\il\vay  Official. 

cur  to  you  that  your  office  will  be  in  better 
touch  with  its  responsibilities  if  it  is  in  charge 
of  a  man  who  has  worked  outside  along  the 
road?  Why  not  look  among  your  trainmen, 
your  yardmen,  your  dispatchers,  your  agents, 
your  operators,  or  even  among  your  section 
foremen?  Experience  is  a  great  teacher,  but 
it  can  never  entirely  supply  the  place  of  native 
abiHty,  of  natural  adaptability.  Brains  and 
tact  are  the  essentials  and  each  is  compara- 
tively useless  without  the  other.  Both  must 
be  developed  by  training,  but  such  training 
does  not  necessarily  have  to  take  the  same 
course  for  all  men.  Railroading  as  a  business 
is  only  seventy-five  years  old,  and  as  a  pro- 
fession is  much  younger  than  that.  It  is  too 
early  in  the  game  to  lay  down  iron-clad  rules 
as  to  the  best  channels  for  training  and  ad- 
vancement. Common  sense  demands  that 
such  avenues  be  broad  and  more  or  less  defi- 
nite. The  danger  is  that  they  will  be  only 
paths  and  so  narrow  that  they  will  wear  into 
ruts. 

Do  not  delude  yourself  into  thinking  that 
by  going  out  on  the  road  you  can  get  away 
from  the  accounts.  They  are  a  fiagman  that 
is  never  left  behind  to  come  in  on  a  following 

20 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

section.  You  can  never  get  beyond  watching 
the  company's  dollars  and  cents  any  more 
than  a  successful  musician  can  omit  practice. 
Some  officials  think  that  the  way  to  examine 
a  payroll  or  a  voucher  is  to  see  that  all  the 
extensions  are  accurately  made,  that  the  col- 
umns are  correctly  added.  This  mechanical 
clerical  work  is  about  the  last  thing  an  official 
should  have  to  do.  He  should  know  how,  but 
his  examination  should  be  from  a  different 
vieA\TDoint.  Primarily  he  must  look  to  see  if 
the  company  is  getting  value  received  for 
money  expended.  He  must  know  that  the 
rolls  and  vouchers  are  honestly  made  up,  that 
agreements  involved,  if  any,  are  carried  out 
to  the  letter.  The  agreements  may  not  be  to 
his  personal  liking,  may  not  accord  with  his 
ideas  of  justice,  but  the  responsibihty  for  that 
part  is  his  superior's,  not  his  own.  There  is 
a  proper  channel  for  him  to  follow  in  attempt- 
ing to  protect  the  company's  interests,  but 
that  channel  is  not  the  one  of  a  petty  ruling 
on  a  minor  question  involved  in  a  voucher  or 
a  payroll.  Overtime,  for  example,  is  not  a 
spook  but  a  business  proposition.  If  earned 
according  to  the  schedule  it  should  be  allowed 
unhesitatingly.     Before  you  jack  up  a  yard- 

21 


Letters  From  A  Rjmlway  Official. 

master  for  having  so  much  overtime,  see  if 
the  cutting  out  of  that  overtime  will  mean  the 
greater  expense  of  working  another  engine. 
The  constant  thought  of  every  official  is  how 
to  reduce  expenses,  how  to  cut  down  payrolls. 
This  habit  of  mind,  commendable  as  it  is,  has 
its  dangers.  In  any  business  we  must  spend 
money  to  get  money.  The  auditor's  state- 
ments do  not  tell  us  why  we  lost  certain  traf- 
fic through  relatively  poor  service.  Their 
silence  is  not  eloquent  upon  the  subject  of 
the  business  we  failed  to  get.  Figures  must 
be  fought  with  figures  and  many  a  good  op- 
erating official  has  had  to  lie  down  in  the  face 
of  the  auditor's  fire  because,  from  lack  of  in- 
telHgent  study  of  statistics  on  his  own  part, 
he  had  no  ammunition  with  which  to  reload. 
Do  not  feel  that  if  you  happen  to  advocate 
an  increase  of  expense  you  are  necessarily  a 
discredit  to  the  profession,  a  dishonor  to  the 
cloth. 

There  are  few  roads  that  would  not  save 
money  in  the  long  run  by  allowing  each  di- 
vision say  one  hundred  dollars  per  month 
for  developing  talent.  The  expense  dis- 
tributed to  oil  for  administrative  machinery 
would  express  the  idea.    It  would  then  be  up 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

to  the  superintendent  to  work  out  original 
methods  for  spending  this  money  to  the  best 
advantage.  A  bright  young  fellow  with  the 
ear  marks  of  a  coming  official  could  be  given 
training  in  various  positions.  While  he  is 
acting  in  a  certain  position,  the  regular  in- 
cumbent could  be  sent  to  observe  methods 
elsewhere  or  be  given  training  in  some  other 
department.  For  example,  while  your  can- 
didate is  running  a  yard,  the  yardmaster 
could  be  an  understudy  for  a  supervisor.  A 
station  agent  could  take  the  place  of  a 
section  foreman,  an  operator  the  place  of 
a  chief  clerk,  and  so  on  indefinitely.  Do 
not  understand  me  as  advocating  a  whole- 
sale shakeup  or  the  doing  away  with  per- 
manency of  tenure.  The  limitations  of  the 
majority  of  men  are  such  that  they  are  better 
left  in  one  fixed  groove.  We  grow  to  be  nar- 
row in  our  methods  because  men  are  narrow. 
What  I  want  is  for  us  to  be  broad  enough  in 
method  to  keep  from  dwarfing  the  exceptions 
in  the  ranks,  and  at  the  same  time  keep  the 
parts  of  our  administrative  machine  inter- 
changeable. The  original  entry  into  the  serv- 
ice is  more  or  less  a  matter  of  accident  as 
to  department  entered.     Let  us  not  leave  a 

22> 


Letters  From  A  R.\il\vay  Official. 

good  man  the  creature  of  accident  all  his 
days.  The  company  is  the  loser  as  well  as  the 
man.  We  complain  because  the  trades  unions 
advocate  a  closed  shop,  a  restricted  output, 
a  limited  number  of  apprentices.  Is  not  their 
attitude  a  logical  development  of  the  example 
we  have  set?     Like  master,  like  man. 

Let  your  new  chief  clerk  understand  that 
he  is  never  to  use  your  signature  or  initials 
to  censure  or  reprimand  any  employe,  either 
directly  or  by  implication.  That  is  a  prerog- 
ative you  cannot  afford  to  delegate.  It  is 
aU  right  if  a  complaint  comes  in  for  the  chief 
clerk  to  investigate  by  writing  in  your  name 
and  saying:  '"Kindly  advise  concerning  al- 
leged failure  to  do  so  and  so;"  or,  "We  have 
a  complaint  that  such  and  such  happened 
and  would  like  to  have  your  statement;"  but 
he  should  stop  right  there.  It  is  all  wrong 
for  him  or  for  you  to  add,  '"We  are  aston- 
ished at  your  ignorance  of  the  rules;"  or, 
''You  must  understand  that  such  conduct  will 
not  be  tolerated."  Wait  until  both  sides  of 
the  case  are  heard.  Then  you  alone  must 
act.  The  division  will  not  go  to  pieces  while 
such  matters  await  your  personal  attention. 
While  you  are  learning  that  even  a  brake- 

24 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

man's  unpaid  board  bill  may  be  satisfactorily 
explained,  the  brakemen  are  learning  that 
even  a  superintendent  can  find  the  time  to  be 
fair  and  just.  A  lack  of  development  of  the 
judicial  quality  in  chief  clerks  and  their  su- 
periors has  cost  the  railroad  stockholders  of 
this  countr}'  many  a  dollar. 

Affectionately,  your  own 

D.  A.  D. 


25 


LETTER  V. 

SAFETY  OF  TRAINS  IN  YARDS. 

April  17,  1904. 

My  Dear  Boy: — 1  have  yours  saying  that 
my  letter  on  yard  work  omits  mention  of 
the  most  important  feature,  the  safety  of 
trains  in  yards;  that  the  letter  is  much  like 
a  cup  of  lunch-counter  coffee — very  good, 
what  there  is  of  it,  and  plenty  of  it,  such 
as  it  is, 

I  admit  that  you  have  caught  me  not  only 
foul  of  the  main,  but  outside  the  switches.  I 
appreciate  your  consideration  in  so  politely 
pulling  the  whistle  cord  for  me,  when  you 
would  have  been  justified  in  setting  the  air. 
We  all  like  to  be  with  good  company  and  pull 
the  president's  special,  and  in  this  case  I  seem 
to  have  with  me  no  less  distinguished  com- 
panions than  the  American  Railway  Associa- 
tion. That  able  body  has  been  detoured  too 
long  around  this  important  matter  of  rules 
governing  trains  in  yards.  Before  I  leave 
their  varnished  cars  and  climb  into  the  gang- 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

way  of  a  switch  engine  to  run  into  the  yards, 
I  want  the  conductor  to  throw  off  a  register 
sh"p  setting  forth  my  admiration  for  the  great 
work  already  done  by  that  brainy  organiza- 
tion. I  take  off  my  hat  to  the  American  Rail- 
way Association.  When  I  take  off  said  hat, 
especially  to  a  lady,  I  always  keep  both  eyes 
open.  Adoration  should  not  be  too  blind  or 
one  may  overlook  some  other  meeting  points 
and  land  clear  off  the  right  of  way. 

Long  ago  some  bright  minds,  whose  identity 
is  lost  in  the  rush  of  the  years,  hit  upon  the 
happy  expedient  of  dividing  trains  into  two 
kinds,  regular  and  extra;  just  as  early  the- 
ology divided  mankind  into  the  two  con- 
venient classes  of  saints  and  sinners.  This 
designation  of  trains,  doubtless  like  all  in- 
novations opposed  at  first,  soon  acquired  the 
sacredness  that  time  brings  to  all  things.  At 
that  period  when  we  got  a  car  over  the  road 
and  into  the  terminal  we  felt  that  its  troubles 
were  about  ended,  as  did  the  contemporary 
novelist  whose  terminal  was  always  a  be- 
trothal scene.  Under  modern  conditions  a 
car  reaching  a  terminal,  like  a  couple  leav- 
ing the  altar,  finds  that  its  problems  have 
only  fairly     begun.     Less     romance,     more 

progress. 

27 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

Did  you  ever  try  to  explain  to  an  intelligent 
traveling  man  just  what  a  train  is?  Did  he 
not  ask  you  some  questions  that  kept  you 
guessing  for  a  week?  Did  he  not  remind  you 
that  outsiders  usually  make  the  inventions 
that  revolutionize  operation?  Radical  changes 
in  methods  of  warfare  are  seldom  neces- 
sitated by  the  inventions  of  military  men. 
A  druggist  invented  the  automatic  coupler. 
Railroad  men  did  not  patent  the  air  brake  or 
devise  the  sleeping  car.  All  this  is  natural, 
because  in  any  profession  where  one  attains 
excellence  in  a  given  method  his  mental  vision 
may  become  contracted;  he  may  reason  in  a 
circle. 

Every  once  in  a  while  we  are  appalled  by  a 
terrible  collision  in  a  terminal,  the  result  per- 
haps of  some  poor  devil  of  an  employe  not 
appreciating  fully  the  meaning  of  "all  trains." 
To  the  innocent  bystander  the  switch  engine 
and  cars  are  just  as  much  a  train  as  the  Pull- 
man flyer  with  its  two  little  green  markers  on 
the  last  car.  After  such  accidents,  for  a  brief 
period,  we  hear  a  great  deal  about  act  of 
Providence,  presumptuousness  of  man,  falli- 
bility of  the  human  mind,  surprise  checking, 
discipline  of  employes,  company  spirit,  gov- 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

ernmental  supervision  and  a  lot  of  other  more 
or  less  unrelated  subjects.  Are  we  not  to 
blame  for  not  having  met  the  issue  squarely? 
Is  it  not  time  that  we  legislated  to  recognize 
the  scores  of  engines  chasing  through  our 
terminals,  from  freighthouse  to  yard,  from 
engine  house  to  station?  Are  they  outcasts? 
Do  the  millions  of  dollars  of  investment  they 
represent  come  through  a  different  treasury? 

To  the  human  mind  an  engine  or  a  motor 
is  a  train,  while  a  cut  of  cars  without  motive 
power  is  only  a  piece  of  a  train,  and  goes  to 
the  brain  as  an  idea  of  something  incomplete. 
All  the  artificial  definitions  of  the  standard 
code  cannot  alter  this  state  of  facts.  What 
do  you  think  of  the  following  proposed  desig- 
nations and  tentative  definitions? 

Train. — An  engine  (or  motor)  in  service, 
with  or  without  cars.  Two  or  more  engines 
(or  motors)  may  be  combined  as  one  train. 

Regular  Train. — A  train  represented  on  the 
time  table.  It  may  consist  of  sections.  A 
section  derives  its  running  existence  from  a 
train  order  requiring  a  regular  train  or  the 
proper  section  thereof,  to  display  prescribed 
signals. 

Extra  Train. — A  train  not  represented  on 

29 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

the  time  table,  but  deriving  its  running  ex- 
istence from  train  order. 

Yard  Train. — A  train  neither  represented 
on  the  time  table  nor  created  by  train  order, 
but  deriving  its  running  existence  from  rules 
governing  movements  within  prescribed 
limits. 

You  will  find  if  you  work  these  definitions 
through  the  standard  code  the  changes  will  be 
slight,  but  the  results  comprehensive  and  sat- 
isfactory. This  will  do  as  a  starter,  but  you 
will  live  to  see  trains  handled  on  single  track 
without  train  orders  as  we  now  understand 
the  term. 

If  this  answers  your  signal,  suppose  we  call 
in  that  flag  we  whistled  out  when  we  stopped 
to  talk  it  over. 

Affectionately,  your  own 

D.  A.  D. 


30 


LETTER    VI. 

STANDARDIZING   ADMINISTRATION. 

April  24,    1904. 

My  Dear  Boy: — While  backing  in  on  a 
branch  idea  I  bumped  into  a  load  consigned 
to  the  American  Railway  Association  which, 
with  your  permission,  I  wish  to  bring  in  be- 
hind the  caboose  to  save  a  switch.  Yes,  I 
have  tied  a  green  flag  on  the  rear  grabiron 
for  a  marker.  When  the  hind  man  has 
dropped  off  to  shut  the  switch  and  has  given 
the  eagle  eye  a  high  sign,  I  shall  make  a  note 
on  the  wheel  report  to  the  effect  that  there  is 
not  a  much  better  daylight  marker  than  the 
caboose  itself.  Some  people  doubt  the  neces- 
sity for  green  flags  on  freight  trains  or  work 
trains  unless  the  caboose  does  not  happen  to 
be  the  last  car.  Night  markers  are  unques- 
tionably necessary,  but  are  not  a  source  of 
additional  expense,  as  the  same  oil  answers 
for  both  the  rear  red  signal  and  the  marker. 

The  idea  in  question  is  that  the  American 
Railway  Association  might  well  afford  to  pay 

31 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

salaries  to  more  of  its  officials  and  let  certain 
ones  give  their  entire  time  to  committee  work 
and  the  general  welfare.  It  is  too  much  to 
expect  that  men,  probably  already  over- 
worked on  their  own  roads,  can  find  the 
broadest  solution  of  problems  in  the  very 
limited  time  allowed.  It  might  be  possible 
to  work  out  a  plan  whereby  election  to  cer- 
tain positions  in  the  association  would  mean 
that  the  individual  elected  was  to  be  loaned 
to  the  association  for  his  term  of  office,  say 
two  years,  and  then  return  to  service  with  his 
own  company.  A  permanent  body  of  officials 
in  such  an  organization  would  be  undesira- 
ble, save  of  course  the  able  secretar}^,  for  the 
reason  that  too  long  a  separation  from  active 
service  would  beget  an  indifference  to  prac- 
tical operating  conditions.  Under  such  a  plan 
officials  would  have  to  be  elected  by  name 
to  prevent  a  company  from  unloading  any  old 
rail  on  the  association.  You  know  that  some 
statistician  has  figured  out  that  the  average 
official  life  of  a  railroad  man  in  any  one  posi- 
tion is  only  about  two  years.  Rearrangement 
of  the  staff  on  the  return  of  an  official  from 
such  broadening  special  duty  should  not  be  a 
difficult  matter.     But,  as  a  man  once  said  to 

22 


Letters  From  A  R.\ilway  Official. 

me,  "Yon  will  not  bring  all  these  reforms 
about  until  the  old  fogies  die  off,  ?nd  by  that 
time  you  will  be  an  old  fogy  yourself  and  it 
will  not  make  any  difference." 

There  is  almost  no  limit  to  the  number  of 
matters  in  railway  administration  that  can  be 
made  standard  and  uniform  for  all  roads.  A 
great  deal  has  been  done,  but  to  a  coming  gen- 
eration the  present  stage  of  accomplishment 
will  seem  to  have  been  only  a  fair  beginning. 
The  hopeful  feature  is  that  roads  now  meet 
each  other  in  a  much  broader  spirit  than  ever 
before.  The  fortress  that  parleys  is  half 
taken,  and  when  negotiations  looking  to  uni- 
formity are  once  begun  a  long  stride  for^vard 
has  been  taken.  Take  the  wage  agreements 
of  a  dozen  roads  at  a  large  terminal.  All 
twelve  are  intended  to  mean  practically  the 
same  thing,  yet  the  wording  of  no  two  will 
be  found  alike.  This  probably  is  not  due  so 
much  to  a  disinclination  to  get  together  as  to 
a  lack  of  time  for  working  out  uniform  de- 
tails. 

Some  roads  are  noticeable  for  the  clearness, 
conciseness  and  brevity  of  their  instructions. 
Others  employ  a  lot  of  surplus  words  which 
are  as  expensive  and  anno}ing  in  operation 

33 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

as  dead  cars  in  a  yard.  On  every  road  there 
are  a  few  men  in  the  official  family  who  have 
a  faculty  of  expression,  either  inborn  or  ac- 
quired. Some  day  when  we  more  fully  over- 
come the  prejudice  against  sending  officials 
to  school  we  shall  utilize  the  services  of  such 
valuable  men  as  instructors  in  style.  When 
this  is  done,  especially  in  the  traffic  and  legal 
departments,  we  shall  materially  reduce  our 
telegraph  expenses.  The  mere  thought  of  the 
thousands  of  unnecessary  words  flying  over 
the  railroad  wires  every  day  is  enough  to  give 
one  telegrapher's  cramp.  Some  roads  occa- 
sionally censor  telegrams  with  a  view  to  re- 
ducing their  number  and  their  length.  These 
efforts,  like  municipal  reform,  are  apt  to  be 
too  spasmodic  to  prove  of  lasting  value.  Suc- 
cess in  anything  depends  upon  keeping  most 
everlastingly  at  it.  You  notice  that  I  do  not 
confine  this  remark  to  our  own  profession. 
Carry  a  flag  for  me  against  the  man  who  al- 
ways says :  "In  railroading  you  have  to  do 
thus  and  so,  for  it's  not  like  other  business." 
All  must  admit  that  conditions  in  railroading 
are  intense;  that,  except  in  an  army  in  time 
of  war,  there  is  no  profession  that  is  more 
strenuous  or  calls  for  better  staying  qualities. 

34 


Letters  From  A  R.\il\vay  Official. 

These  facts,  however,  do  not  put  us  in  a  class 
by  onrselves,  a  little  lower  than  the  angels,  a 
few  car  lengths  ahead  of  perfection.  As 
Oliver  Cromwell  said,  some  things  are  funda- 
mental. One  of  them  is  that  good  organiza- 
tion and  administration  depend  upon  certain 
basic  principles  which  hold  true  for  any  in- 
dustry. Whatever  one's  religious  views,  he 
must  find  that  the  Bible  is  one  of  the  best 
books  of  rules  ever  written,  one  of  the  best 
standard  codes  on  organization  that  has  been 
devised.  Men  were  organizers  on  a  large  scale 
centuries  before  railroads  were  built. 

When,  after  months  of  deliberation,  the 
convention  had  finally  agreed  upon  the  pro- 
visions of  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States,  the  document  was  referred  for  re- 
vision to  a  committee  on  style  and  expression. 
The  result  has  been  the  admiration  of  the 
English  speaking  race.  The  caller's  book 
does  not  show  that  the  American  Railway  As- 
sociation has  ordered  a  run  for  such  a  com- 
mittee. Should  a  claim  of  that  sort  be  made 
it  would  hardly  be  advisable  to  file  the  last 
standard  code  as  an  exhibit. 

Affectionately,  your  own 

D.  A.  D. 

35 


LETTER   VII. 

THE   NEW   TRAINMASTER  AND   CIVIL   SERVICE. 

May  I,  1904. 
My  Dear  Boy: — I  have  your  letter  telling 
about  your  new  trainmaster.  You  feel  that 
a  man  from  another  division  has  been  forced 
on  you  by  the  general  superintendent;  that 
you  have  suffered  a  personal  affront  because 
the  promotion  you  recommended  on  your 
own  division  has  not  been  approved.  I  am 
sorry  to  rule  against  you,  but  from  your  own 
story  if  anybody  deserves  six  months  twice  a 
year,  it  is  you  and  not  the  general  superin- 
tendent. The  latter  may  have  been  lacking 
in  tact ;  he  may  have  been  unduly  inconsider- 
ate for  your  personal  feelings,  but  in  making 
the  appointment,  which  you  admit  is  a  good 
one,  he  has  doubtless  been  actuated  by  a  con- 
scientious sense  of  duty.  Remember  that  a 
fundamental  principle  of  highly  organized 
bodies  is  that  a  superior  cannot  expect  to  se- 
lect 'his  own  lieutenants.  The  next  higher  is 
always  consulted  and  generally  the  latter's  su- 
36 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

periors  also.  The  theory  is  that  they  are  in 
a  position  to  have  a  broader  view,  to  size  up 
more  talent,  to  draw  from  the  system  at  large, 
and  to  accentuate  principles  and  policies  in 
promotions  and  appointments.  This  theory 
is  supported  by  practice,  which  goes  even 
further.  On  most  roads  circulars  signed  by 
the  superintendent  and  approved  by  the  gen- 
eral superintendent  announce  the  appoint- 
ment of  a  trainmaster.  Do  not  let  this  delude 
you  into  thinking  the  general  manager  has 
not  been  consulted.  In  fact,  if  you  could 
drop  a  nickel  in  the  slot  and  get  a  phono- 
graphic report  of  conferences  on  the  appoint- 
ment, you  might  happen  to  recognize  the 
voice  of  the  president  himself  before  the  ma- 
chine shut  ofif.  All  of  which  should  convince 
you  that  the  stockholders  and  directors  have 
strewn  other  official  pebbles  besides  yourself 
along  the  organization  beach.  You  say  that 
the  relation  of  superintendent  and  trainmaster 
should  be  that  of  elder  brother  and  younger 
brother.  Very  true,  but  do  any  of  us  ever 
select  our  brothers? 

In  a  primitive  state  of  civilization,  when 
force  is  law,  the  military  chieftain  rules.  He 
makes  and  breaks  his  lieutenants  at  pleasure. 


^^8534 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

The  oldest  form  of  organization  we  have  is 
the  military,  for  armies  are  older  than  govern- 
ments. Every  nation  has  its  birth  in  the 
throes  of  battle.  Time  passes  and  the  chief- 
tain finds  his  heutenants  insisting  on  perma- 
nency of  tenure.  Gradually  they  secure  it, 
and  channels  of  promotion  and  appointment 
are  defined.  These  reach  the  lower  grades 
and  the  general  finds  that  he  has  not  even 
the  authority  to  discuss  a  private  soldier  from 
the  service  until  the  latter  has  been  convicted 
by  a  court-martial  of  an  offense  covered  by 
enactment  of  the  legislative  body  of  the  na- 
tion. In  every  civilized  country  officers  are 
commissioned  by  the  executive  head  of  the 
nation  and  by  no  one  else.  The  general-in- 
chief  may  recommend,  but  he  cannot  appoint 
even  a  second  lieutenant.  Consider  now  a 
commercial  organization.  Do  you  think  the 
high-salaried  captain  of  an  ocean  liner  can 
select  his  first  and  second  officers  without 
consulting  his  superiors?  Does  he  select  his 
own  crew?  Really,  now,  do  you  think  the 
general  superintendent  should  perfunctorily 
approve  your  recommendation  for  train- 
master? 

Men  have  been  organizing  armies  and  have 

38 


Letters  From  A  R.\il\vay  Official. 

been  going  down  to  the  sea  in  ships  for  thou- 
sands of  years.  Let  the  railroads,  which  have 
been  in  existence  only  seventy-five  years,  draw 
another  leaf  from  the  lesson  of  the  ages.  The 
time  is  fast  coming  when  an  official  cannot 
discharge  a  skilled  laborer  from  the  service 
without  the  approval  of  at  least  one  higher 
official,  ^^'e  may  not  like  it;  we  may  say 
that  such  policies  will  put  the  road  in  the 
hands  of  a  receiver.  That  is  just  what  the 
conductors  said  when  we  took  away  from 
them  the  privilege  of  hiring  their  own  brake- 
men.  It  will  come  just  the  same.  We  may 
as  well  look  pleasant  and  see  the  bright  side. 
Where  employment  is  made  a  lifetime  busi- 
ness, where  admission  thereto  is  restricted  to 
the  lower  grades  and  to  younger  men,  public 
sentiment  will  not  stand  for  letting  the  ques- 
tion of  a  man's  liveHhood  be  decided  by  any 
one  official,  however  fair  and  just  he  may  be. 
Safety  and  good  administration  may  demand 
the  man's  summary  suspension  from  duty  by 
the  immediate  official  or  employe  in  charge. 
If  the  man  has  been  in  the  service  a  prescribed 
probationary  period  his  permanent  discharge 
will  have  to  be  approved  by  higher  authority. 
]\Ien  will  not  care  to  risk  having  a  recom- 

39 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Officlal. 

mendation  for  discharge  disapproved.  They 
will  learn  that  the  more  carefully  a  discharge 
has  been  considered  the  less  readily  will  a  re- 
instatement be  made. 

Some  people  think  you  cannot  have  mili- 
tary methods  and  organization  on  a  railroad 
because  it  has  no  guardhouse.  This  is  a  mis- 
take. Your  old  dad,  after  trying  both,  finds 
that  railroads,  in  some  respects,  have  a  more 
powerful  discipline  than  the  army.  A  dis- 
cipline based  on  bread  and  butter,  shoes  for 
the  baby,  love  of  home,  and  pride  of  family, 
which  is  the  bulwark  of  the  state,  has  in  itself 
all  necessary  elements  for  maxinmm  practical 
effectiveness. 

Reinstatements,  unless  based  on  new^  evi- 
dence, are  demoralizing  to  discipline,  for  the 
reason  that  the  unworthy  employe  bumps 
back  to  a  lower  grade  some  deserving  man, 
whose  good  service  is  then  reckoned  at  a  dis- 
count. Some  passenger  conductors  become 
so  color  blind  they  cannot  tell  the  company's 
money  from  their  own.  They  keep  down  the 
wrong  lead  until  the  auditor  derails  them  at 
the  spotter's  switch.  The  ex-conductor  gets 
hungry,  the  sympathetic  grievance  commit- 
tee, not  knowing  what  is  for  its  own  best  in- 
40 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

terests,  intercedes.  The  manag-ement,  dream- 
ing of  loyalty  in  coming  strikes,  reinstates 
the  offender.  Some  young  conductor,  who, 
on  the  strength  of  his  promotion,  has  married 
or  bought  a  home,  is  set  back  to  braking-. 
This  causes  some  brakeman  to  carry  the  mail 
to  the  extra  list.  He  quits  in  disgust  and  an- 
other road,  less  sympathetic,  gets  the  benefit 
of  his  training.  Other  reinstatements  follow 
and  more  of  the  younger  men  quit.  Years 
go  on,  a  rush  of  business  comes.  The  man- 
agement look  in  vain  for  promotion  material 
and  wonder  at  the  seeming  ingratitude  in 
quitting  of  so  many  good  young  men  whom 
it  was  fully  intended  to  promote — in  the  sweet 
by  and  by.  This  is  not  the  experience  of 
one  road,  but  of  many.  Let  us  be  just  before 
we  are  generous. 

Speaking  of  discharged  employes,  did  you 
ever  happen  to  be  in  a  general  office  with  an 
ex-passenger  conductor,  discharged  for  "un- 
satisfactory services,"  but  seeking  immediate 
reinstatement;  and  have  an  ex-ofHcial,  who 
left  the  service  in  first-class  standing,  come  in 
and  ask  for  the  next  official  vacancy?  The 
conductor  might  succeed,  but  the  official 
would  fall  a  sacrifice  on  the  shrine  of  civil 
41 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

service,  a  fetich  because,  in  its  true  meaning, 
so  little  understood. 

I  shall  string  a  civil  service  limited  for  you 
on  some  other  time  card. 

Affectionately,  your  own 

D.  A.  D. 


42 


LETTER    VIII. 

EDUCATION    OF   SEVERAL    KINDS. 

May  8,  1904. 
My  Dear  Boy: — I  happened  to  meet  your 
general  manager  the  other  day,  and  the  way 
he  spoke  of  the  good  work  you  are  doing 
warmed  the  cockles  of  my  old  heart.  He 
said  that  you  couldn't  rest  easy  until  you 
knew  more  about  the  division  than  any  other 
man.  This,  of  course,  is  as  it  should  be, 
but  it  is  astonishing  how  many  division  super- 
intendents are  satisfied  to  grope  along  in  the 
dark.  Then  some  fine  day  the  general  of^- 
cials  come  along  on  an  inspection  trip  and 
unintentionally  make  the  superintendent  look 
like  thirty  cents  by  the  sincere  questions  they 
ask  about  the  division  which  he  is  unable  to 
answer.  If  one's  memory  has  not  been 
trained  by  education  it  is  a  good  thing  to 
condense  information  and  have  it  in  a  note- 
book in  the  vest  pocket.  Some  wise  man 
has  said  that  all  education  after  we  are 
twenty-five  years  old  consists  in  knowing 
where  to  look  for  things. 

43 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

Another  help  that  school  education  gives 
to  an  official  is  to  broaden  him  so  that  he  can 
use  different  methods  on  different  properties. 
There  are  three  main  reasons  why  officials 
without  much  early  education  have  succeeded 
and  will  continue  to  succeed.  The  first  is 
native  ability,  which  remains  comparatively 
undeveloped  without  the  second,  which  is  op- 
portunity. The  third  is  the  good  luck  to 
work  under  organizers  and  developers  of 
talent.  Training  under  the  right  sort  of 
leaders  is  an  education  in  itself.  The  danger 
of  relying  on  such  training  alone  is  that  one 
may  copy  too  blindly  the  methods  of  his 
master  without  being  broad  enough  to  realize 
that  the  same  master  under  other  conditions 
of  territory  would  adopt  radically  different 
methods.  This  is  the  reason  why  there  are 
so  many  failures  when  a  new  man  takes  a 
crowd  of  his  followers  to  reorganize  a  prop- 
erty. If  all  succeed,  very  well,  but  if  one 
fails  the  most  of  the  bunch  go  tumbling  dowTi 
like  a  row  of  blocks. 

Again,  the  educated  man  from  his  knowl- 
edge of  history  is  less  likely  to  forget  that 
what  may  go  in  fifteen-year-old  Oklahoma 
will  receive  the  icy  mitt  and  the  marble  heart 

44 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

in  three-hundred-year-old  Virginia.  Triples 
that  are  O.  K.  in  cavalier  South  Carolina  may 
be  too  quick  acting  in  puritan  Massachusetts. 
Commercialism,  like  patriotism,  rests  on  cer- 
tain fundamental  principles.  The  application 
of  these  principles  may  be  as  uniform  as  a 
train  of  system  cars;  it  may  be  as  diverse  as 
the  cars  in  a  train  of  a  connecting  line. 
Orthodoxy  is  usually  my  doxy. 

The  rough  and  ready  efficiency  of  the  West, 
which  has  developed  a  vast  domain,  has  won 
the  praise  of  the  world.  Our  rough  and 
ready  brethren  are  finding  that,  as  society 
rapidly  becomes  more  highly  organized,  this 
old-time  efficiency  must  be  supplemented 
with  technical  education.  So  you  find  your 
self-made  magnate  giving  his  sons  college 
educations.  The  only  regrettable  part  is  that 
to  make  it  easy  the  old  man  raises  the  low 
joints  for  the  boys  and  they  do  not  always 
get  bumpings  enough  to  test  their  equip- 
ment thoroughly.  Time  will  correct  this, 
and  more  college  men,  more  presidents'  sons, 
will  fire,  will  switch,  will  brake,  will  become 
men  behind  cars  as  well  as  men  behind  desks. 
It  is  not  only  what  you  know,  but  what  you 
make  people  believe  you  know,  that  counts 

45 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

in  this  little  game  of  life.  The  American  peo- 
ple never  go  back  on  a  man  who  puts  aside 
birth  or  education  and  stakes  his  all  upon 
his  manhood;  who  is  willing  to  share  the  dan- 
gers and  the  hardships  of  his  calling.  Our 
military  men  have  long  since  learned  this  les- 
son, and  the  son  of  the  general  must  do  the 
same  guard  duty,  make  the  same  marches, 
dig  the  same  trenches,  and  face  the  same  bul- 
lets as  his  fellows.  His  father  knows  that  for 
it  to  be  otherwise  would  be  to  handicap 
the  son  by  the  contempt  of  his  comrades. 
Like  the  Spartan  mother,  he  says :  "My  son, 
return  with  your  shield  or  upon  it." 

Did  you  ever  consider  how  uncertain  a 
quantity  is  opportunity,  as  inscrutable  as  the 
ways  of  Providence?  In  all  ages  and  in  all 
callings  it  has  been  one  of  the  numerous  mys- 
teries that  make  life  so  attractive.  There  is 
may  a  veteran  conductor,  many  a  gray-haired 
station  agent,  who,  if  he  could  have  had  the 
chance  to  start,  would  have  become  a  general 
manager.  Some  men  have  to  go  to  another 
road  to  be  fully  appreciated.  When  a  man 
is  young  he  is  criticized  if  he  changes  roads. 
When  he  is  older  his  services  are  sought  be- 
cause of  his  varied  experience  with  different 

46 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

roads.  Human  nature  is  prone  to  limit  the 
length  of  everybody's  train  to  the  capacity  of 
its  own  sidetracks. 

In  the  spring  of  1861  there  went  from  his 
tannery  at  Galena  to  the  capital  of  Illinois 
an  ex-officer,  a  professional  soldier,  whose 
gallantry  and  efficiency  had  stood  the  tests 
of  the  war  with  Mexico.  Springfield  was 
filled  with  commission  seekers,  natives  of  the 
State,  and  Illinois,  like  some  railroads,  did 
not  wish  to  go  off  her  own  rails  for  talent. 
She  needed  trained  clerks  to  make  out  muster 
rolls,  to  book  wheel  reports  in  the  yard  office, 
as  it  were.  This  humble  employment  the  si- 
lent soldier  accepted  with  better  grace  than 
has  characterized  some  former  railway  offi- 
cials under  similar  circumstances.  The  op- 
portunity came  in  the  shape  of  a  mutinous 
regiment,  wdiich,  like  a  mountain  division, 
was  hard  to  handle.  Three  years  later  the 
clerk  had  run  around  all  the  officers,  was  com- 
manding all  the  armies  of  the  Union,  and 
the  world  rang  with  the  military  fame  of 
Ulysses  S.  Grant.  Strange  indeed  is  oppor- 
tunity. Some  successful  railroad  men  owe 
their  official  start  to  the  seeming  bad  luck  of 
being  let  out  as  an  employe. 

47 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

Your  general  manager  said  that  he  had 
read  some  of  my  letters  to  you ;  threw  me 
a  warm  jolly  by  remarking  that  you  are  a 
credit  to  such  teaching.  Then  he  confessed 
that  he  had  asked  the  son  if  the  old  man  al- 
ways practices  what  he  preaches.  I  am 
pleased  to  know  from  his  own  lips  that  you 
uncovered  his  headlight  on  that  point. 
Affectionately,  your  own 

D.  A.  D. 


48 


LETTER    IX. 

CORRESPONDENCE  AND  TELEGRAMS. 

May  15,  1904. 
My  Dear  Boy : — You  have  asked  me  to  say 
something  more  on  the  subject  of  correspond- 
ence and  telegrams.  In  these  days  of  push 
the  button  for  the  stenographer,  letters  and 
telegrams  are  longer  than  when  the  officials 
themselves  wrote  out  communications  in 
long-hand.  It  therefore  usually  remains  for 
employes  like  yardmasters,  conductors  and 
operators  to  preserve  the  good  old  terse  style 
of  the  past.  Some  of  them  send  messages 
that  are  models  of  comprehensiveness  and 
brevity.  When  you  run  across  a  man  who 
is  an  artist  in  that  sort  of  thing  keep  an  eye 
on  him.  The  chances  are  that  he  uses  the 
same  good  judgment  in  all  of  his  work ;  that 
he  accomplishes  the  greatest  possible  amount 
with  the  least  possible  effort;  that  he  takes 
advantage  of  the  easiest  and  best  way;  that 
he  has  the  prime  requisites  of  a  coming  offi- 
cial, namely,  a  cool  head  and  horse  sense. 

49 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

Of  course,  the  matter  of  terseness  can  be 
run  into  the  ground.  Clearness  should  not 
be  sacrificed  to  brevity.  There  is  a  happy 
medium  between  the  off  agin,  on  agin,  gone 
agin,  Finnegan,  of  the  Irish  section  foreman 
and  the  regretsky  to  reportsky  of  the  Rus- 
sian general.  The  point  to  be  gained  is  to 
avoid  repetition  and  unnecessary  words. 
When  wiring  your  office  that  you  will  go  east 
on  Number  Two,  the  word  east  is  superfluous 
for  the  reason  that  on  your  road  Number 
Two  can  not  possibly  run  west.  For  years 
in  our  train  orders  we  used  the  phrase,  right 
of  track.  Then  somebody  was  bright  enough 
to  think  that  as  Stonewall  Jackson  is  no  longer 
hauling  locomotives  from  one  line  to  another 
over  the  Valley  turnpike  in  Virginia,  the 
words  "of  track"  might  be  cut  out.  Similar 
amputations  have  been  made  in  the  morning 
delay  reports  of  many  roads. 

Human  nature  is  so  prone  to  grasp  at  the 
shadow  rather  than  the  substance  that  men 
cling  to  words  rather  than  to  ideas.  When 
you  have  written  a  bulletin  directing  some- 
thing to  be  done,  do  not  discount  your  faith 
in  its  effect  by  the  introduction  of  our  good 
old  friend,  "Be  Governed  Accordingly."    We 

so 


Letters  From  A  Kmlway  Official. 

get  in  tlie  habit  of  doing  a  thing  simply  be- 
cause we  have  always  seen  it  done  and  know 
no  other  way.  We  paint  on  the  sides  of  our 
cars  such  unnecessary  words  as  baggage, 
chair,  dining,  parlor,  furniture,  stock,  etc., 
etc.,  just  as  though  these  cars  were  never  used 
for  anything  else ;  just  as  though  the  words 
really  serv^ed  some  useful  purpose.  The  people 
who  do  not  know  the  different  kinds  of  cars 
are  beyond  the  reach  of  instruction  through 
such  information.  You  have  heard  of  the  man 
who  entered  the  dining  car  by  mistake  and 
asked,  "Is  this  the  smoking  car?"  Where- 
upon a  waiter  grinned  and  replied,  "No,  suh, 
this  is  the  chewin'  cah.''  The  Pullman  peo- 
ple years  ago  discontinued  the  use  of  the 
words  "sleeping  car"  on  their  equipment.  It 
is  not  of  record  that  the  voices  of  the  car  in- 
spectors and  the  switchmen  on  the  outside 
have  awakened  any  more  passengers  than 
usual  on  account  of  such  omission. 

We  borrowed  from  the  army  and  the  navy 
the  idea  of  uniforms  for  employes,  brass  but- 
tons, gold  lace  and  all.  Lately  soldiers  and 
sailors  are  wearing  plainer,  simpler  service 
uniforms.  We,  however,  have  not  taken  a 
tumble,  perhaps  because  no  one  has  hit  us 

51 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

with  a  club,  or  run  into  our  switch  shanty  and 
knocked  it  off  the  right  of  way.  The  cap  is 
the  essential  feature  of  a  trainman's  uniform. 
He  doesn't  exactly  talk  through  it,  but  its 
badge  and  ornaments  identify  his  responsi- 
bihties  and  proclaim  his  authority.  Add  to 
the  cap  a  plain  blue  uniform  suit  with  the 
detachable  black  buttons  the  tailor  furnishes, 
and  you  have  a  very  satisfactory  result.  The 
cap  then  becomes  the  only  difference  between 
the  costume  for  the  road  and  that  for  the 
street.  Where  tried,  it  has  been  found  that 
men  wore  their  best  suits  on  duty  and  on  the 
street,  and  kept  their  worn  and  shabby  suits 
to  wear  around  home.  At  present  on  nearly 
all  roads,  as  the  uniform  is  too  conspicuous 
to  be  worn  off  duty,  the  men  are  tempted  to 
defer  buying  a  new  uniform  until  the  old  be- 
comes very  shabby.  It  has  been  found  that 
freight  crews  are  easily  induced  to  take  ad- 
vantage of  the  contract  price  to  buy  such 
plain  uniforms  for  street  wear.  Such  freight 
crews  can  be  provided  with  extra  caps  from 
the  office  in  emergencies  and  be  utilized  to 
advantage;  sometimes  reducing  the  amount 
of  deadhead  mileage  in  making  special  one- 
way passenger  movements.     The  street  rail- 

52 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official, 

way  of  at  least  one  large  city  has  tried  this 
system  of  plain  uniforms  with  excellent  re- 
sults. Why  should  the  most  of  us  be  so  timid 
that  we  must  have  a  precedent  before  we  can 
endorse  a  proposed  plan?  Like  a  successful 
after-dinner  speaker,  I  am  responding  to  the 
toast  on  expression  by  talking  about  other 
things. 

In  writing  important  letters  or  instructions 
it  often  pays  to  take  the  time  to  sit  down  and 
make  a  rough  draft  with  a  lead  pencil.  If 
you  have  the  dictation  habit  so  firmly  fixed 
that  this  is  irksome,  revise  the  first  draft  made 
by  the  stenographer.  Except  when  writing 
in  the  familiar  style,  the  third  person  should 
be  used  rather  than  the  first  or  second.  The 
use  of  the  second  person  should  be  carefully 
avoided  in  formulating  general  instructions; 
its  use  in  special  instructions  to  a  few  indi- 
viduals is  sometimes,  but  rarely,  permissible. 
In  writing  or  dictating  telegrams  figure 
roughly  what  the  message  would  cost  the 
company  for  transmission  at  commercial  rates, 
and  its  probable  reduction  if  the  price  per 
extra  word  came  out  of  your  own  pocket. 
As  far  as  possible  avoid  letting  your  initials 
become  cheap  by  being  used  by  too   many 

53 


Letters  From  A  R.\ilway  Official. 

people.  If  the  management  do  not  disap- 
prove, encourage  your  subordinates  to  do 
routine  business  over  their  own  initials  or 
over  symbols,  as  S.  for  superintendent  (G.  S. 
for  general  superintendent,  and  so  on),  so  that 
when  your  initials  come  over  the  wire  they 
will  indicate  personal  attention  and  final  ac- 
tion. This,  too,  has  been  tried  successfully 
in  contravention  of  the  fallacy  that  unques- 
tioning obedience  must  be  rendered  even 
when  it  is  known  that  the  official's  initials 
have  been  signed  by  the  office  boy.  It  may 
be  remarked  in  passing,  that  appreciation  and 
fame  await  the  individual  who  will  be  able  to 
coin  some  short  and  expressive  words  to  re- 
place such  awkward  and  cumbrous  designa- 
tions as  superintendent  of  motive  power,  en- 
gineer maintenance  of  way,  assistant  to  the 
first  vice-president,  etc.,  etc. 

Did  you  ever  think  how  desirable  and  prac- 
ticable it  would  be  to  adopt  the  Government 
method  of  addressing  the  office  instead  of  the 
incumbent  by  name?  We  do  this  with  train 
orders,  and  usually  in  addressing  station 
agents.  We  should  also  address  'The  Super- 
intendent, Getthere  Division,  Suchtown, 
Somestate,"  and  not  use  his  name  unless  it  is 
54 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

intended  as  personal  and  to  be  opened  by  him 
alone. 

In  all  correspondence  remember  that  a 
reprimand,  expressed  or  implied,  may  be 
taken  in  a  very  different  sense  by  the  recipient 
from  that  intended  by  the  sender.  Your  old 
dad  has  maintained  satisfactory  discipline 
among  quite  a  bunch  of  men  on  more  than 
one  trunk  line  without  ever  writing  a  letter 
of  reprimand  or  sending  a  hot  message  over 
the  wire.  The  advice  of  the  famous  politi- 
cian to  walk  ten  miles  to  see  a  man  rather 
than  write  him  a  letter  is  paraphrased  for  our 
business  to  mean  rawhide  yourself  fifty  or -a 
hundred  miles  over  the  road  to  jack  up  a  man 
rather  than  play  him  a  tune  on  the  type- 
writer. Another  useful  injunction  is  that  of 
a  famous  soldier  and  diplomat,  "Never  under- 
rate yourself  in  action;  never  overrate  your- 
self in  a  report." 

Affectionately,  your  own 

D.  A.  D. 


55 


LETTER  X. 

THE   BAYONET    PRECEDES    THE   GOSPEL. 

May  22,  1904. 
My  Dear  Boy: — The  evolution  of  the  rela- 
tive importance  of  the  several  departments  in 
railroad  work  is  an  interesting  study.  The 
early  railroads  were  short  and  usually  had 
for  president  the  most  important  man  of  af- 
fairs in  the  community,  a  banker,  a  lawyer,  a 
publicist,  a  what-not.  Frequently  this  man 
could  not  give  his  whole  time  to  the  road  and 
he  leaned  heavily  upon  his  superintendent, 
who,  perhaps,  had  been  the  engineer  in 
charge  of  construction.  The  superintendent 
of  the  early  days  was  general  manager  on  a 
small  scale,  and  with  limited  facilities  had  to 
be  a  man  fertile  in  resources.  The  superin- 
tendent of  to-day  is  a  better  man,  because  the 
race  improves  all  the  time,  but  he  performs 
duties  of  a  decidedly  different  nature.  It  is 
idle  to  speculate  as  to  just  what  he  would  do 
under  primitive  conditions.  A  return  to  such 
circumstances  is  impossible.     We  know  that 

56 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

in  a  pinch  our  railway  officials  and  employes, 
as  a  class,  are  never  found  wanting.  They 
will  measure  up  to  standard  in  the  future  as 
they  have  in  the  past.  One  fact  they  must 
never  forget  is  that,  like  soldiers  and  sailors, 
their  faculties  must  be  so  alert,  their  grasp  so 
comprehensive,  that  they  will  not  get  lost 
when  the  fortunes  of  the  service  bring  them 
into  strange  territory.  The  pace  is  too  swift 
to  admit  of  standing  still  to  get  one's  bear- 
ings. 

There  were  few  officials  and  the  conductors 
were  very  important  personages.  When  the 
superintendent  needed  an  assistant  it  was  nat- 
ural to  take  a  conductor  who  helped  around 
the  office,  ran  the  pay  car  and  specials,  and 
made  himself  generally  useful.  Later  on, 
train  dispatching  developed  splendid  tests  of 
executive  ability  and  the  official  staff  was 
recruited  by  promotions  from  dispatchers. 
Still  later,  the  growing  importance  of  terminal 
problems  gave  yardmasters  a  chance  for  rec- 
ognition and  advancement. 

As  West  Point  was  the  nursery  of  the  early 
constructing  engineers,  many  of  the  early 
roads  were  built  and  operated  by  military 
men,  v,-hose  impress  in  railway  methods  has 

57 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

survived  to  this  day.  When  the  civil  war 
was  over  the  railroads  gained  for  their  service 
thousands  of  men  whose  ability  had  stood 
the  stern  test  of  camp  and  battle,  men  who 
could  meet  unexpected  conditions.  These 
men  bore  the  brunt  in  the  wonderful  rail- 
road development  that  secured  forever  the 
commercial  greatness  of  our  country.  The 
value  of  military  methods  was  aj)preciated  by 
them  and  almost  unconsciously  such  methods 
were  copied  in  organization,  in  discipline,  in 
correspondence.  One  reason  the  great  Penn- 
sylvania organization  is  so  strong  and  success- 
ful is  the  training  some  of  its  embryo  high 
officials  received  in  the  military  railway  bu- 
reau of  the  War  Department  during  the  great 
conflict.  The  bayonet  always  precedes  the 
gospel.  When  the  military  have  cleared  the 
wilderness  of  the  savage  foe  the  railroad 
brings  a  permanent  civilization.  Witness  the 
marvelous  growth  of  the  great  West  during 
the  last  forty  years. 

A  majority  of  the  railroads  in  the  country 
at  some  time  or  other  passed  through  a  re- 
ceivership. Here  came  a  chance  for  legal 
men,  and  after  reorganizations  lawyer  presi- 
dents have  not  been  uncommon.  At  the 
58 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

next  stage  of  development  many  railroads 
had  been  built  and  systems  were  growing 
larger.  The  civil  engineer,  who  in  earlier 
years  would  have  become  the  president  or 
chief  operating  official,  was  now  taken  care 
of  in  a  newly  necessitated  department,  that  of 
maintenance  and  construction,  sufficiently  im- 
portant to  attract  his  talents.  Following  this 
period  competition  was  keen ;  it  was  a  struggle 
for  existence.  The  man  who  could  get  the 
business  was  IT.  The  traffic  man  had  his  in- 
ning and,  if  not  president,  dictated  policies 
and  the  amount  of  his  own  salary  and  per- 
quisites. ^^'ith  the  growth  of  the  community 
of  interest  idea  the  traffic  man  is  just  as  im- 
portant ;  but  he  is  no  longer  wreckmaster,  and 
the  transportation  man  is  up  under  the  lime 
light  near  the  derrick  car.  Between  the  dif- 
ferent dynasties  of  departments  the  transpor- 
tation man,  like  the  rock  of  ages,  is  always  the 
standby  and  always  will  be.  The  other  de- 
partments come  and  go  in  relative  impor- 
tance, but  the  transportation  never  shuts  off, 
and  is  there  with  the  sand  when  the  others 
unload  from  the  gangway. 

The  revolution  in  standards  of  power  and 
equipment  incident  to  recent  years  of  tractive 

59 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

units  and  ton-mile  costs  has  brought  the 
mechanical  man  prominently  in  front  of  the 
headlight.  Fortunately  for  himself  and  for 
the  service  in  general  he  has  not  dodged  the 
rays  when  anyone  cared  to  read  figures,  and 
the  way  to  higher  executive  positions  has  not 
been  left  dark  for  him.  The  pendulum  is 
already  coming  back  toward  the  transporta- 
tion man.  Whether  the  next  swing  will  be 
toward  the  signal  engineer  or  toward  the  elec- 
trician it  is  hard  to  say. 

The  lesson  a  superintendent  should  learn 
from  all  this  is  that  he  has  more  and  more 
superiors  to  please,  more  and  more  fads  to 
follow,  more  and  more  improvements  to  de- 
velop, more  and  more  different  points  of  view 
to  reconcile.  He  must  merge  his  own  im- 
portance, his  likes  and  dislikes  in  the  great 
corporation  with  which  he  has  cast  his  lot.  If 
his  superiors  spell  traveler  with  two  Ts  or 
labor  with  a  u,  let  him  do  likewise.  By  so 
yielding  he  is  not  losing  any  manhood.  He 
is  winning  a  victory  over  the  crotchety  part 
of  his  individuality  and  leaving  room  for  its 
development  along  broader  lines.  He  that 
ruleth  his  spirit  is  greater  than  he  that  taketh 
a  city.  As  no  man  can  take  a  city  or  do  any 
60 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

great  work  unaided  he  must  learn  first  to  rule 
his  own  spirit  in  order  that  he  may  rule  others 
and  gain  their  heartiest  co-operation.  The 
superintendent  who  is  habitually  calm  and  po- 
lite, however  great  the  provocation  to  speak 
angrily,  will  soon  find  that  if  he  is  firm  and 
just  his  men  are  worrying  even  more  than 
he  lest  things  go  wrong  on  the  division. 

In  the  matter  of  discipline  there  has  been 
a  great  change  in  sentiment  and  in  method. 
Whether  or  not  it  is  all  advisable  is  very  much 
of  a  question.  There  are  too  many  collisions 
in  proportion  to  the  improvement  in  material 
and  personnel.  In  the  old  days  the  crew  at 
fault,  whether  they  actually  got  together  or 
not,  were  discharged  and  forever  barred  off 
the  road.  Nowadays  we  are  apt  to  give  them 
another  trial  on  the  theory  that  we  are  im- 
mune from  future  mistakes  on  their  part. 
This  may  or  may  not  be  so,  but  how  about 
the  effect  on  others  in  the  service?  How 
about  the  men  who  are  thereby  entitled  to 
promotion?  Is  not  a  failure  to  make  an  ex- 
ample of  such  offenders  holding  life  and 
property  too  cheap?  We  may  pity  the  un- 
fortunate blunderers,  just  as  we  may  pity  a 
drunkard  or  a  thief,  but  their  usefulness  to 
6i 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

us  should  be  over.  They  may  start  in  again, 
but  it  must  be  on  some  other  road.  Our 
duty  to  the  pubHc  and  to  our  stockholders  de- 
mands that  the  safety  of  a  train  should  be 
sacred.  One  of  the  most  absurd  conclusions 
is  to  measure  the  punishment  by  the  amount 
of  damage,  according  to  how  straight  the 
track  happened  to  be,  according  to  how  hard 
they  happened  to  hit.  Some  railroad  sins 
can  be  forgiven,  but  drunkenness,  chronic  or 
periodic;  stealing,  money  or  property;  and 
collisions,  actual  or  constructive,  should  be 
unpardonable  on  any  road,  however  thor- 
oughly they  may  be  blotted  out  elsewhere. 
Less  sentiment  and  more  discharges  will 
mean  fewer  collisions. 

Affectionately,  your  own 

D.  A.  D. 


62 


LETTER    XI. 

PREVENTING    WRECKS   BEFORE  THEY    HAPPEN. 

May  29,  1904. 
My  Dear  Boy: — An  able  and  successful 
general  manager — not  all  able  men  and  not 
all  general  managers  are  successful — recently 
called  attention  to  a  most  important  distinc- 
tion in  the  training  and  practice  of  superin- 
tendents. He  says  that  too  much  stress  is 
laid  upon  the  development  of  ability  to  locate 
responsibility  after  a  wreck  occurs,  and  not 
enough  upon  the  quality  of  controlling  cir- 
cumstances, of  cultivating  precautionary  hab- 
its that  will  prevent  disaster.  As  he  aptly 
puts  it,  the  superintendent  should  be  a  doc- 
tor, a  health  officer,  rather  than  a  coroner; 
his  staff  a  sanitary  commission,  a  board  of 
health  to  prevent  disease  rather  than  a  jury 
to  determine  its  causes  and  effects.  Some 
superintendents  pride  themselves  on  their 
legal  acumen,  their  ability  to  cross-examine, 
and  on  the  way  they  can  catch  a  crew  trying 
to  lie  out  of  a  mix-up.    This  is  all  very  well  if 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

it  does  not  obscure  the  main  object,  namely, 
to  minimize  disaster  in  the  future.  The  inves- 
tigation serves,  perhaps,  to  determine  what 
men  to  discipline  and  discharge  as  an  ex- 
ample to  others  in  the  service.  It  should 
also  serve  as  a  lesson  in  official  methods. 
However  thorough  and  searching,  it  cannot 
restore  life  or  return  property.  The  damage 
has  been  done.  All  the  king's  horses  and  all 
the  king's  men  cannot  put  Humpty-Dumpty 
together  again. 

Some  of  your  men  every  day  will  give  you 
the  old  hot  air,  "As  long  as  there  are  railroads 
there  will  be  wrecks."  To  which  you  should 
hand  back  the  stereotyped  reply,  "Very  true, 
but  let's  figure  on  letting  the  other  fellow 
have  them."  A  discreet  remark  or  sugges- 
tion that  will  put  a  man  to  thinking  for  him- 
self is  one  of  the  secrets  of  success  in  hand- 
ling men.  Never  miss  an  opportunity  to 
make  the  point  that  wrecks  seldom  occur 
from  the  neglect  of  any  one  man.  It  is  when 
two  or  more  forget  at  the  same  time  or  fall 
down  together  that  trouble  results.  Impress 
on  the  brakeman  the  fact  that  the  very  stop 
he  neglects  to  flag  is  the  time  when  the  oper- 
ator is  most  likely  to  let  two  trains  in  the 

64 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

same  block.  Remind  your  conductor  that 
when  he  fails  to  read  the  orders  to  the  en- 
gineman  in  person  and  sends  them  forward 
by  the  porter  or  the  head  brakeman,  that  is 
the  very  trip  the  orders  get  torn  or  smeared 
so  that  a  fatal  mistake  results.  When  a  pas- 
senger train  breaks  in  two  the  air  usually  sets 
on  both  portions.  It  fails  to  do  so  when  bums 
or  misplaced  safety  chains  have  turned  the 
angle  cocks ;  and  that  is  the  time  there  should 
be  a  trainman  riding  in  the  rear  car.  Men 
will  tell  you  so  and  so  cannot  happen,  but 
next  week  it  does  happen  just  the  same.  The 
whistle  hose  and  the  brake  hose  cannot  be 
coupled  together  because  the  connections  are 
purposely  made  of  a  different  pattern.  A 
green  apprentice  coupling  an  engine  to  a  ten- 
der at  a  roundhouse  managed  to  pound  to- 
gether the  couplings  of  the  wrong  pairs  of 
hose,  which  the  engine  inspector  had  failed 
to  notice  were  badly  worn.  That  was  the 
day  the  car  inspectors  neglected  to  try  the 
signal  and  the  air  before  the  train  left  the  ter- 
minal. By  a  strange  fatality  the  conductor 
trusted  the  car  men  for  the  station  test.  The 
engineman  was  too  busy  to  make  a  running- 
test.    They  all  got  wise  when  the  air  wouldn't 

65 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

work  at  the  first  railroad  crossing.  Watch 
the  inspectors  to  see  that  they  do  not  form 
the  lazy  habit  of  giving  the  signal  to  try  the 
air  from  the  next  to  the  last  car,  of  walking 
only  half  the  length  of  the  train  to  see  the 
pistons  and  the  brakeshoes.  Never  wink  at 
an  irregularity  of  that  sort.  It  will  come 
back  to  plague  you  a  hundredfold.  Go  right 
after  it  quietly,  but  promptly  and  effectually. 
Do  not  wait  for  disaster  or  for  investigation 
by  your  superiors  to  tell  you  that  a  loose 
practice  prevails.  Get  such  information  with 
your  own  senses  or  from  observations  of  your 
staff. 

It  is  vigilance,  eternal  vigilance,  that  is  the 
price  of  safety.  Teach  your  men  that  a  hun- 
dred successes  do  not  justify  an  avoidable 
failure,  that  twenty  years  of  faithful  service 
cannot  condone  criminal  carelessness.  A  fun- 
damental is  that  when  backing  up  there 
should  always  be  a  man  on  the  rear  end. 
Educate  your  men  to  feel  that  neglect  of  this 
wise  precaution  is  just  as  mortifying  as  to  ap- 
pear in  public  without  clothes.  In  shoving 
long  cuts  of  cars  without  using  air,  get  your 
brakemen  and  switchmen  to  feel  a  pride  in 
setting  a  hand  brake  on  the  end  car  to  take 
66 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

the  slack  and  save  the  jerk  on  the  drawbars. 
Work  for  the  old-time  feeling  of  chagrin 
that  came  to  the  calloused-armed  passenger 
brakeman,  in  the  days  of  Armstrong  brakes, 
when  he  did  not  go  after  them  soon  enough 
and  let  his  train  run  by  the  station.  The  men 
are  not  to  blame  for  this  loss  of  pride  and 
interest.  We,  the  officials,  are  at  fault.  We 
have  not  kept  ahead  of  the  game.  We  have 
been  coroners,  not  sanitary  inspectors. 

If  an  engine  is  waiting  at  a  hand  derail  or 
at  a  crossover  for  a  train,  neither  switch 
should  be  thrown  until  the  train  has  passed. 
Then,  if  the  throttle  happens  to  fly  open  at 
just  the  wrong  moment,  the  train  will  not  be 
sideswiped.  If  not  trained,  your  switchmen 
will  throw  every  switch  possible  beforehand 
so  as  to  be  ready.  They  may  think  such  pre- 
cautions are  old  womanish,  but  the  time  will 
come  when  your  wisdom  will  be  vindicated. 
If  a  train  is  waiting  for  a  connection,  with  a 
siding  switch  in  rear,  the  facing  point  switch 
should  be  opened,  so  that  if  the  incoming 
man  loses  his  air  or  misjudges  distances  the 
train  will  not  be  hit.  Similarly  a  flagman 
going  back  to  protect  a  train  between  switches 
should  open  the  siding  switch  as  he  passes  it. 

67 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

The  switch  is  more  effectual  than  a  torpedo, 
and  if  a  following  train  happens  to  get  by  him 
and  his  torpedoes  his  ow^n  train  will  not  be 
hit.  He  should  flag  just  the  same,  because  a 
train  entering  the  open  switch  too  fast  might 
turn  over.  It  is  better  to  take  a  chance  on  a 
derailment  than  on  a  collision.  It  is  better 
still  to  have  such  training,  vigilance  and  dis- 
cipline that  there  will  be  little  chance  of  either 
disaster. 

Train  your  men  to  do  things  because  they 
are  right,  because  it  is  manly  to  do  good  rail- 
roading. Then,  when  you  hold  an  investiga- 
tion you  will  not  find  at  the  moment  the  acci- 
dent happened  that  the  engineman  was  prim- 
ing his  injector,  the  fireman  putting  in  a  fire, 
the  head  brakeman  shoveling  down  coal,  the 
conductor  sorting  his  bills,  and  the  hind  man 
starting  to  boil  coffee  for  supper. 

There  is  hardly  a  conductor  or  an  engine- 
man  of  any  length  of  service  who  has  not  at 
some  time  overlooked  an  order  or  a  train. 
When  he  has  forgotten,  his  partner  has  re- 
membered. The  trouble  has  come,  bad  luck, 
they  call  it,  when  they  both  forgot.  Many  a 
$50  operator  has  saved  the  job  of  a  $150 
engineman.  Keep  your  men  keyed  up  to  the 
68 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

idea  that  this  is  too  uncertain ;  that  each  must 
watch  his  own  job,  that  in  so  doing  he  may 
keep  his  comrade  out  of  the  hole,  that  by 
conscientious  vigilance  he  becomes  a  better 
man  and  more  of  a  credit  to  his  calling.  No 
man  wilfully  courts  danger  to  life  and  prop- 
erty. His  failures  are  an  accompaniment,  a 
concomitant  they  call  it  in  logic,  of  officials 
being  better  coroners  than  they  are  doctors. 
Affectionately,  your  own 

D.  A.  D. 


69 


LETTER    XII. 

THE  SELF-MADE  MAN  WHO  WORSHIPS  HIS  MAKER. 

June  5,  1904. 
My  Dear  Boy : — I  once  heard  General 
Sheridan,  my  old  commander,  say  that  when 
he  was  a  lieutenant  he  made  up  his  mind  to  be 
the  best  lieutenant  in  his  regiment;  that  in 
every  grade  to  which  promotion  brought  him 
he  strove  to  be  the  best;  that  he  attributed 
his  high  rank  to  this  consistent  effort.  Right 
here  is  a  moral  that  many  a  railroad  man 
should  apply  to  himself.  Although  Sheridan's 
comrades  at  West  Point  and  in  the  service 
knew  his  efficiency,  the  powers  that  were  in 
1 861  found  no  higher  position  for  him  than 
that  of  captain  and  assistant  quartermaster. 
During  the  first  year  of  the  civil  war,  while 
politicians  were  called  colonels  and  lawyers 
tried  to  be  generals,  this  trained  soldier  was 
inspecting  horses  and  mules  in  the  Southwest, 
a  veterinary's  work.  Some  men,  disheart- 
ened by  such  apparent  inappreciation,  would 
have  lost  interest,  would  have  let  the  con- 
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Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

tractor  palm  off  inferior  animals  on  the  gov- 
ernment. Not  so  with  the  future  commander 
of  the  army.  He  tried  all  the  harder  and  his 
work  was  efficient,  clean  and  honest.  In  the 
spring  of  1862  a  Michigan  cavalry  regiment 
needed  a  colonel  and  the  officer  hailing  from 
Ohio,  who  had  bought  horses  so  well,  had  a 
chance  to  drill  both  horses  and  men.  A  year 
and  a  half  later  he  was  commanding  a  divi- 
sion of  infantry,  and  six  months  after  that  as 
major  general  a  corps  of  cavalry.  Popular 
opinion  pictures  Sheridan  as  a  dashing 
fighter,  executing  the  plans  of  some  one  else. 
Never  was  there  a  more  incomplete  concep- 
tion. No  matter  how  hard  had  been  the  fight- 
ing, how  wearing  the  march,  it  was  Sheridan 
who  rose  in  the  night  to  see  that  the  sleep- 
ing camp  or  bivouac  did  not  suffer  from  lax- 
ity in  guard  duty,  that  all  was  ready  for  the 
plans  of  the  morrow.  The  general  manager 
did  not  have  to  tell  him  that  the  switch  lamps 
on  his  division  were  not  burning.  The  gen- 
eral superintendent  did  not  have  to  wire  him 
that  his  water  cranes  were  out  of  order.  The 
superintendent  of  motive  power  did  not  have 
to  complain  that  his  enginemen  were  not 
kept  in  line.     The  trafBc  jiianager  did  not 

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Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

lose  freight  because  his  night  terminals  be- 
came congested. 

There  is  many  a  railroad  man  who  has  lost 
heart  and  lessened  his  usefulness  because  an 
honest  but  inappreciative  management  has 
promoted  the  wrong  man.  Then  is  the  time 
to  come  out  strong,  to  try  harder  than  before 
to  be  appreciated.  The  world  has  little  use 
for  soreheads.  The  more  strenuous  the  con- 
ditions the  less  sympathy  for  the  sulker  in  the 
tent.  Be  game  and  do  not  kick  for  rest.  The 
sleeve  is  no  place  to  wear  a  wounded  heart. 
Do  not  put  up  a  squeal  about  nepotism.  As 
long  as  man  loves  woman  and  that  woman's 
children  the  relatives  of  the  management  will 
always  be  the  easiest  for  the  promotion  call- 
boy  to  find.  Remember  that  though  they  be 
marked  up  first  out,  there  are  other  runs  to 
be  filled;  that  sooner  or  later  there  are 
chances  for  more  crews  to  get  out.  If  you 
find  flaws  in  the  reasons  announced  for  cer- 
tain appointments,  forget  them  in  the 
thought  that  honesty  of  purpose  is  a  distin- 
guishing characteristic  of  operating  manage- 
ment. Not  only  look  pleasant  but  head  ofif 
the  efforts  of  foolish  friends  to  form  a  volun- 
teer grievance  committee  in  your  behalf. 

n 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

Assuming  that  you  are  trying  to  be  the 
best  division  superintendent,  remember  that 
in  the  final  roundup  it  is  not  your  own  ideas 
of  success  that  must  prevail.  You  may  know 
that  you  are  stronger  and  better  than  the 
official  who  gets  the  preferred  run.  You  may 
know  that  it  would  be  best  for  the  company 
to  have  you  run  around  him.  All  the  men 
on  the  division  may  unconsciously  feel  your 
superior  ability.  They  may  all  swear  by  you 
and  make  your  name  almost  sacred  around 
the  lunch  counter  and  the  caboose  track.  All 
this  will  not  count  for  full  value  if  you  do  not 
please  your  superiors.  W^hen  the  general 
manager  comes  on  your  division  you  must  be 
ready  for  any  kind  of  a  statistical  run.  He 
has  not  time  to  wait  for  you  to  oil  around. 
His  every  hour  is  valuable  and  like  all  busy 
men  he  forms  his  opinions  in  a  hurry.  Re- 
member that  until  we  know  men  intimately 
we  judge  them  by  standards  more  or  less  arti- 
ficial, but  usually  pretty  accurate  in  the  ag- 
gregate. Thus  a  man  who  is  careless  and 
untidy  in  his  dress  is  apt  to  overlook  little 
essentials  in  the  management  of  men  and 
affairs.  The  dandy  is  almost  never  a  coward ; 
for,  if  physical  courage  be  lacking,  his  pride 

n 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

supplies  its  place.  The  superintendent  whose 
desk  is  in  confusion  probably  has  untidy  sta- 
tions and  dirty  coaches.  The  man  who 
slouches  coatless  into  his  superior's  office  and 
sprawls  into  a  chair  before  being  invited  to 
sit  down  is  likely  to  be  equally  inconsiderate 
of  the  public  his  company  serves.  The  to- 
bacco lover  who  cannot  refrain  from  smoking 
or  chewing  the  few  minutes  he  is  close  to  the 
throne  will  probably  not  inherit  much  of  the 
kingdom  of  advancement.  The  man  who 
clings  to  the  George  Washington  habit  of 
eating  with  his  knife  and  the  Thomas  Jeffer- 
son custom  of  drinking  from  his  saucer  has 
the  burden  of  proof  on  him  to  show  that  he  is 
not  unobservant  of  progress  in  other  things 
and  is  not  generally  behind  the  times.  The 
self-made  man  in  so  many  cases  worships  his 
maker  that  he  forgets  the  divinity  that  doth 
hedge  a  king.  The  man  above  may  be  no 
better,  perhaps  not  as  good,  morally,  men- 
tally, physically  and  socially,  but  officially  he 
is  the  superior  in  fact  as  well  as  in  name. 
Familiarity  breeds  contempt  and  the  more  re- 
spect you  show  your  superior  the  more  dig- 
nity you  are  conferring  upon  yourself,  the 
less  likely  are  your  own  subordinates  to  for- 

74 


Letters  From  A  R.\il\\ay  Official. 

get  the  respect  that  is  due  your  position. 
Self-restraint  and  mental  poise  cultivate  an 
unconscious  dignity  of  character  that  is  of 
immeasurable  value  in  the  handling  of  men. 
Abraham  Lincoln  and  Robert  E.  Lee,  men  of 
radically  different  types  but  alike  in  being 
idolized  by  their  people,  were  popular  heroes, 
although  neither  was  addressed,  even  by  his 
intimates,  by  his  first  name.  The  highest 
compliment  you  can  pay  an  associate  or  a 
subordinate  is  to  address  him  in  private  by 
his  first  name.  It  shows  either  that  you  have 
known  him  a  long  time  or  that  you  think 
enough  of  him  to  separate  him  from  his  pay- 
roll designation. 

One  of  the  amiable  failings  of  human  na- 
ture is  to  be  self-satisfied,  a  condition  that  in 
our  profession  is  probably  intensified.  We 
railroad  men  have  to  think  and  act  in  such  a 
hurry  that  we  become  very  cocksure  of  our- 
selves. We  have  so  little  time  for  introspec- 
tion that  we  often  regard  the  science  of  rail- 
roading as  putting  it  on  the  other  fellow. 
\\'hen  disaster  occurs,  no  matter  how  de- 
fective may  have  been  our  equipment,  how 
parsimonious  our  policy,  how  lax  our  dis- 
cipline, we  cry  out  long  and  loud  at  the  un- 

/5 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

trustworthiness  of  employes,  at  the  deca- 
dence of  company  spirit,  at  the  growing  evils 
of  the  labor  unions.  An  intelligent  public 
usually  gets  on  to  us,  however,  and  we  pay 
for  such  mental  and  vocal  pyrotechnics  with 
compound  interest.  It  will  profit  us  to  do  a 
little  more  self-examination,  to  copy  the  pub- 
Hcan  rather  than  the  pharisee.  The  conductor 
who  burns  off  journals  will  assure  us  of  his 
distinguished  concern  and  of  his  constant  in- 
junctions to  his  brakemen  to  watch  for  hot 
boxes.  The  superintendent  who  rawhides  his 
men  will  tell  you  with  tears  in  his  voice  how 
necessary  it  is  to  be  considerate  of  the  boys 
on  the  road.  The  general  superintendent  who 
sends  long  and  unnecessary  telegrams  will 
deplore  with  you  the  tendency  of  the  trafHc 
department  to  burden  the  wires.  All  these 
are  good  men  and  true,  but  they  have  not 
formed  the  habit  of  healthy,  honest  self-criti- 
cism. Strong,  indeed,  is  the  man  who  can 
stand  up  and  say,  like  Lee  at  Gettysburg,  "I 
was  in  command  and  responsible.  If  anyone 
is  to  blame  I  am  the  man." 

The  greatest  of  executives  are  those  who 
can  make  men  think  for  themselves,  who  can 
work  men  and  have  them  believe  they  are 

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Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

playing,  who  can  suggest  a  new  thought  to  a 
man  and  leave  him  with  the  idea  that  he 
originated  it  himself.  A  great  deal  of  effort 
is  lost,  a  vast  amount  of  mental  force  is  wasted 
in  trying  to  convince  people  that  you  alone 
originated  an  idea  or  a  movement.  Bury 
such  a  thought  in  the  results  produced,  for  it 
is  results  we  are  after.  Get  your  satisfaction 
in  said  results  and  your  amusement  in  the 
honest  self-glorification  of  some  unconscious 
borrower  who  has  utilized  your  idea.  It 
doesn't  pay  to  be  too  much  of  an  originator. 
If  you  have  advanced  ideas,  keep  yourself  in 
the  background  or  you  may  kill  the  ideas. 
Men  find  the  old  alignment  so  familiar  that 
they  are  slow  to  want  curves  replaced  by 
tangents.  If  you  are  too  ubiquitous  with  sug- 
gestions they  will  become  leery  of  your  good 
judgment  and  will  unconsciously  set  the  fish 
tail  W'hen  you  whistle  into  town.  If  you  will 
run  past  the  distant  signal  and  find  your 
superior  at  the  home,  some  of  the  best  stops 
for  the  suggestion  derail  are :  "You  doubt- 
less have  considered  the  advisability  of  thus 
and  so ;"  or,  ''I  assume  you  are  not  quite 
ready  to  decide  the  question  of  hit  or  miss;" 
or,  "As  you  were  saying  the  other  day,  we 

77 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

are  losing  money  by  deadheading-  crews ;"  or. 
"I  hope  you  will  be  able  to  carry  out  your 
idea  of  introducing  train  staffs;"  or,  "On  fur- 
ther consideration,  do  you  care  to  recom- 
mend adopting  lap  sidings  for  the  new  exten- 
sion?" etc.  Of  course  this  kind  of  a  sand  valve 
must  not  be  opened  too  wide  or  too  often  or 
some  of  the  soft  soap  will  get  on  the  detector 
bar  and  violate  the  interlocking  rules. 
Aft'ectionately,  your  own 

D.  A.  D. 


73 


LETTER   XIII. 

THE  FRIEND-MILE  AS  A  UNIT  OF  MEASURE. 

June  12,  1904. 
My  Dear  Boy : — Your  chief  dispatcher  blew 
through  here  the  other  day  on  his  vacation 
and  dropped  in  to  pay  his  respects.  He 
rather  apologized  for  so  doing,  as  he  seemed 
to  think  it  might  be  considered  an  intrusion 
to  call  on  a  stranger.  I  took  it  as  a  compli- 
ment to  myself  and  as  a  mark  of  his  loyalty 
to  you.  It  is  so  easy  for  us  old  fellows  to  for- 
get that  we  were  once  junior  of^cials  our- 
selves that  I  rather  like  to  keep  in  touch  with 
those  who  are  to  come  after  and  maintain  the 
time-honored  standards  of  the  profession.  I 
never  like  to  say  very  much  about  my  desire 
to  acquire  information  from  everyone  I  meet, 
for  experience  has  made  me  a  little  leery  of 
the  man  who  whistles  too  long  for  that  sta- 
tion. He  is  apt  to  toot  his  own  horn  so 
much  that  he  doesn't  hear  the  other  fellow's 
signals.  So  I  tried  not  to  do  all  the  talking, 
and  did  not  tell  my  guest  of  the  great  im- 

79 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

provements  I  had  made  since  I  came  to  this 
position.  I  preferred  to  let  him  hear  that 
from  someone  else.  If  one  should  take  too 
literally  the  talk  of  the  officials  on  whom  he 
calls  he  would  wonder  how  the  road  ever  ran 
before  each  held  down  his  particular  job ;  how 
there  can  possibly  be  any  improvement  made 
by  those  who  come  after.  No,  I  do  not  advo- 
cate hiding-  one's  light  under  a  bucket  in  the 
cab  all  the  time — only  when  running. 

The  world  is  getting  to  place  more  and 
more  confidence  in  the  man  who  thinks  out 
loud.  It  trusts  him  because  he  is  not  doubt- 
ful of  himself.  The  stunt  of  looking  wise  and 
not  expressing  an  opinion  when  a  suggestion 
is  made  is  no  longer  popular.  A  non-com- 
mittal promise  to  look  into  the  matter  may  be 
construed  as  a  mask  for  ignorance  or  tim- 
idity. The  more  a  man  knows  the  more 
frankly  he  acknowledges  that  a  certain  idea 
is  new  to  him.  Men  to  whom  talking  and 
writing  do  not  come  easy  sometimes  say  be- 
ware of  the  windy  man,  but  there  are  some 
mighty  efficient  railroaders  who  act  and  per- 
form all  the  better  for  being  able  to  handle 
words.  Hot  air  is  all  right  if  properly  com- 
pressed. The  idle  breeze  dries  the  ground 
80 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

and  runs  windmills.  Sand  bites  the  rail  in 
more  economical  quantities  when  fed  down 
by  the  pneumatic  attachment.  Every  division 
has  its  Windy  Bill,  its  Chattering  Charlie,  its 
Gasbag  George;  but  some  w-ay,  when  they 
are  on  the  road  you  always  feel  safe.  They 
may  work  a  con  game  on  some  of  the  agents 
and  dispatchers,  but  they  get  over  the  road 
with  the  local.  You  feel  good  when  you  meet 
them.  The  man  you  want  to  run  from  is 
Calamity  Jake,  who  always  has  a  tale  of  woe 
as  long  as  a  gravel  train.  His  caboose  rides 
rough;  its  stove  smokes;  the  caller  doesn't 
give  him  time  enough  for  his  wife  to  cook 
breakfast;  the  yardmaster  saves  all  the  shop 
cripples  for  his  train ;  he  can't  trust  the  igno- 
rant engineers;  the  brakemen  are  all  farmers, 
and  the  signal  oil  won't  burn.  If  you  tell  him 
that's  all  right,  that  you  wall  try  and  correct 
all  these  things  when  the  car  accountant's 
office  stops  kicking  on  his  wheel  reports,  he 
will  look  at  you  in  sympathetic  sadness  and 
bewail  the  modern  tendency  to  make  clerks 
of  conductors. 

Your  chief  dispatcher  is  a  fine  fellow  and 
understands   the   art   of  getting  away.      He 
didn't  w^ear  out  his  welcome  but  broke  away 
8i 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

while  making  a  good  impression.  You  have 
to  unlock  the  switch  for  some  men  before 
they  can  couple  their  crossings  and  get  out 
of  town.  The  dispatcher  has  to  send  the 
operator  outside  with  a  clearance.  Acquaint- 
ance is  one  of  a  young  man's  most  valuable 
assets,  and  a  two  minutes'  interview  may 
grade  the  way  for  a  lifelong  run.  Before  the 
world  was  as  good  as  it  is  now,  men  rather 
prided  themselves  on  the  number  of  enemies 
they  had  made.  Nowadays  the  friend  mile 
is  a  more  desirable  unit  of  measure. 

Washington  Irving  puts  it  very  prettily 
Vv'here  he  says,  "for  who  is  there  among  us 
who  does  not  like  now  and  then  to  play  the 
sage?"  So  I  felt  rather  flattered  when  your 
chief  dispatcher  asked  me  for  advice  as  to 
wdiat  to  study  in  order  to  get  on  in  the  rail- 
way world.  I  told  him  first  of  all  to  read 
every  bit  of  company  literature  that  he  could 
get  hold  of;  not  to  skim  through  a  part  of 
the  pamphlet  on  refrigerator  cars  and  guess 
at  the  rest.  A  table  of  freight  rates  may  be- 
come interesting  if  properly  approached.  Do 
not  try  to  memorize  data  and  statistics,  but 
rather  plod  through  them  at  least  once  with 
a  view  to  trj^ing  to  master  the  principles  that 
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Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

govern.  Life  is  very  full  in  this  twentieth 
century,  but,  broadly  speaking,  it  is  still  pos- 
sible to  know  something  of  everything  as 
well  as  everything  of  something.  The  day  is 
coming  when  we  will  not  entrust  a  man  w-ith 
the  important  duties  and  the  great  responsi- 
bilities of  a  division  superintendent  until  we 
have  given  him  a  brief  course  in  every  depart- 
ment. We  examine  a  man  before  we  let  him 
run  an  engine,  but  how  about  the  man  who 
runs  him?  A  superintendent  should  know 
enough  about  an  engine  to  handle  the  engine- 
men  just  as  he  does  the  trainmen.  ^Vhen 
we  have  men  successfully  running  engines 
who  can  barely  read  and  write,  it  is  a  mistake 
to  claim  that  a  locomotive  is  such  a  sacred 
mystery  that  only  the  mechanical  department 
can  judge  whether  or  not  it  is  properly 
handled.  Enginemen  are  transportation  men, 
and  the  time  that  master  mechanics  put  in 
assigning  crews,  keeping  an  age  book,  and 
otherwise  duplicating  the  superintendent's 
work  might  a  great  deal  better  be  given  to 
the  back  shop.  The  yardmaster  has  one 
caller  and  the  roundhouse  foreman  another. 
The  two  callers  go  up  the  same  street,  some- 
times  together,   and   call   men  in   adjoining 

83 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

houses,  an  expensive  duplication  of  work. 
The  trainmaster  rides  in  the  caboose  and  the 
traveling  engineer — road  foreman  is  the 
modern  term — in  the  engine,  but  neither 
dares  presume  to  know  the  business  of  the 
other.  Every  trainmaster  should  be  a  travel- 
ing engineer  and  every  traveling  engineer 
should  be  a  trainmaster.  That  will  be  the 
case  when  we  train  officials  along  more  defi- 
nite lines.  Honey  bees  feed  their  future  queen 
a  special  food.  No,  I  would  not  decrease  the 
number  of  officials,  if  anything  I  would  in- 
crease it,  I  would  not,  however,  let  every 
official  created  have  a  chief  clerk  and  a  sten- 
ographer. I  would  make  it  impossible  for 
him  to  yield  to  the  temptation  to  add  a 
bureau  of  records  to  the  amount  of  useless 
information  already  on  file.  I  wouldn't  lose 
my  nerve  if  now  and  then  a  set  of  ancient 
papers  got  lost,  for  with  less  red  tape  quicker 
action  would  result  and  little  would  get  away. 
The  first  time  the  trainmaster  had  to  wait  an 
hour  or  two  before  he  could  dictate  a  letter 
in  the  superintendent's  office,  or  could  use  a 
stenographer  in  his  own  office,  he  would  beef 
for  a  separate  establishment.  If  more  help 
should  be  needed,  which  would  be  very 
84 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

doubtful,  put  it  on,  but  do  not  limit  its  use- 
fulness to  any  one  official.  With  a  proper, 
responsible  head  it  is  entirely  feasible  to  carry 
the  community  of  interest  idea  into  office  or- 
ganization. If  the  division  engineer  is  under 
the  superintendent,  why,  in  sending  papers 
into  the  next  room  to  him,  write  a  letter  and 
burden  your  files  with  the  carbon  of  the 
stereotyped,  "Kindly  note  next  attached  and 
lake  necessary  action?"  Is  not  his  office  a 
part  of  the  superintendent's?  Have  you  not 
the  same  right  to  papers  there  that  you  have 
to  those  in  the  office  of  the  chief  dispatcher? 
Why  not  go  even  further  and  have  one  chief 
clerk  and  one  set  of  records  for  the  whole 
outfit,  just  as  an  assistant  superintendent  can 
handle  a  part  of  the  work  without  having  a 
separate  force?  If  you  ever  rearrange  an 
office  building,  fix  it  so  that  the  casual  visitor 
waiting  to  see  the  boss  will  not  learn  state 
secrets  by  hearing  the  chief  clerk  dictate 
letters.  , 

A  number  of  roads  have  tried  the  experi- 
ment of  putting  the  enginemen  and  the 
roundhousemen  solely  under  the  superinten- 
dent, and  of  confining  the  master  mechanic 
to  his  proper  function  of  running  the  shops. 

«5 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

It  has  usually  failed;  not  on  account  of  in- 
herent weakness  as  a  system,  but  because  the 
superintendent  didn't  superintend,  and  found 
it  too  convenient  to  try  to  shift  the  responsi- 
bility to  the  mechanical  department.  Reform 
has  to  begin  at  the  top,  and  if  the  division  is 
to  be  the  unit  the  superintendent  must  be 
something  more  than  a  high-class  chief  dis- 
patcher finding  flaws  in  train  sheets.  It  is 
not  enough  for  him  to  be  a  star  division  en- 
gineer, a  boss  yardmaster.  He  must  remem- 
ber that  his  holding  of  any  of  these  positions 
is  ancient  history,  not  to  be  forgotten,  be- 
cause valuable  and  instructive,  but  neverthe- 
less a  thing  of  the  past.  As  the  yardmaster 
and  the  dispatcher  must  scatter  their  trains, 
so  the  superintendent  must  keep  his  staff 
doing  different  things.  He  must  avoid  hav- 
ing two  men  doing  the  same  thing.  If  it  is 
better  to  call  the  roundhouse  foreman  a  mas- 
ter mechanic  and  invent  a  title  for  the  man 
behind  the  back  shop,  let  us  do  so ;  but  by  all 
means  avoid  working  the  master  mechanic  at 
present  as  foreman,  head  caller,  road  time- 
keeper and  roundhouse  clerk.  The  superin- 
tendent can  boss  all  these  jobs,  and  transpor- 
tation,   including    its    operating    attributes, 

86 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

must  focus  at  his  office.  It  is  not  the  super- 
intendent who  works  the  most  hours  who  is 
the  most  successful.  It  is  he  who  puts  in  the 
best  licks  at  the  right  time,  night  or  day,  and 
with  the  right  man  or  men. 

I  told  your  chief  dispatcher  that  a  knowl- 
edge of  law  is  as  important  to  a  real  superin- 
tendent as  a  knowledge  of  telegraphy.  I 
advised  him  to  give  himself  the  pleasure  of 
reading  Cooley's  edition  of  Blackstone, 
vrhich,  if  taken  in  homeopathic  doses,  is  one 
of  the  clearest  things  in  the  language.  Every 
superintendent  gets  to  be  more  or  less  of  a 
law^yer.  It  should  not  be  necessary  to  refer 
every  little  fire  or  stock  claim  to  the  legal  de- 
partment for  some  of  its  students  to  render 
a  profound  opinion  upon  a  matter  of  common 
sense.  It  is  so  easy  to  follow  the  line  of  least 
resistance  that  we  too  often  evade  responsi- 
bility by  throwing  up  our  hands  and  saying 
that  such  and  such  is  a  legal  question,  a 
mechanical  matter,  or  a  traffic  problem.  We 
gracefully  pass  it  up  to  the  other  fellow,  and 
think  we  are  in  to  clear  when  an  investiga- 
tion happens  to  come.  By  and  by,  obHvious 
of  the  relation  between  cause  and  effect,  we 
deplore  the  curtailment  of  our  authority  and 
inveigh  against  centralization. 
87 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

I  had  some  other  ideas  to  set  out  for  you, 
but  we  have  drifted  so  near  the  switch  that 
there  is  not  room  enough  to  make  a  drop 
of  the  caboose.  So  I  shall  either  pull  the 
whole  train  into  the  yard  or  get  permission 
from  the  yardmaster  to  cut  off  on  the  main, 
and  like  an  orthodox  conductor,  leave  them 
for  the  night  men  to  switch  out.  We  con- 
ductors feel  that,  as  a  switch  engine  lies 
around  the  most  of  the  time,  it  can  always  do 
at  least  one  more  job,  besides  having  time  to 
shove  us  out  of  the  yard  and  over  the  hill. 
Affectionately,  your  own 

D.  A.  D. 


88 


LETTER    XIV. 

THE  MANAGEMENT  THAT  BREEDS   FROM    ITS  OWN 
HERD. 

June  19,  1904. 

My  Dear  Boy: — History  repeats  itself,  and 
railroad  history  is  made  so  fast  that  we  re- 
peat ourselves  very  often.  Mankind  absorbs 
a  certain  amount  from  the  experience  of 
others.  In  spite  of  the  much  good  that 
comes,  the  same  old  fallacies  are  followed,  the 
same  old  blunders  are  made.  Within  the  last 
fifty  3^ears  every  road  in  the  country,  at  some 
time  or  other,  has  undergone  at  least  one  re- 
organization and  a  corresponding  radical 
change  in  personnel.  Always,  after  several 
new  camels  get  their  heads  under  the  tent, 
comes  a  newspaper  pronunciamento  that 
thereafter  the  management  will  breed  from  its 
own  herd.  This  inbreeding  invariably  leads 
ultimately  to  narrowness  if  not  to  deteriora- 
tion. The  cousins  intermarry  too  often  and 
ere  long  the  road  is  breeding  its  own  scrubs. 

Within  the  last  five  years  every  road  in  the 

89 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

country  has  gone  outside  its  own  ranks  for 
official  talent.  The  oldest  roads  have  had 
only  a  few  Leonard  Woods  and  Fred  Fun- 
stons,  a  president  here,  a  vice-president  there. 
Other  roads  have  changed  officials  so  fast  that 
one  is  reminded  of  the  traveler  sojourning  in 
Paris  during  the  French  Revolution.  He  in- 
structed his  servant  to  tell  him  every  morning 
what  the  weather  was,  that  he  might  know 
how  to  dress  himself,  and  what  the  govern- 
ment was,  that  he  might  know  how  to  con- 
duct himself.  What  then  of  our  boasted  civil 
service;  of  the  wonderful  administrative  ma- 
chines we  build  up  and  find  wanting?  Is  the 
principle  wrong  or  is  its  application  faulty? 
The  earnest  efforts  of  able  men,  crowned  by 
many  partial  successes,  are  sufficient  guaran- 
tee of  honesty  of  purpose,  of  the  necessity  for 
something  of  the  sort  that  has  been  attempted. 
He  who  criticises,  be  he  ever  so  honest,  must 
suggest  a  practical  remedy  or  he  soon  de- 
scends from  the  level  of  the  critic  to  that  of 
the  demagogue  or  the  common  scold. 

Our  trouble  seems  to  be,  not  with  civil 
service  as  an  abstract  proposition,  but  with 
the  type  we  have  been  getting.  It  is  about 
Z-99  as  compared  with  the  real  thing.    It  has 

90 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

too  many  flat  wheels  to  run  smoothly.  It 
must  be  jacked  up  high  enough  for  new 
trucks  and  a  stronger  kingbolt.  True  civil 
service  presupposes  maximum  care  in  original 
selection.  It  doesn't  mean  that  we  shall  wait 
until  the  grain  and  the  coal  begin  to  move 
before  we  figure  on  more  crews.  It  rather 
contemplates  having  available  firemen  in 
wipers,  and  willing  brakemen  in  clerks.  Every 
superintendent  believes  that  he  is  the  best 
judge  of  men  on  the  pike.  On  every  system 
are  probably  men  who  can  give  him  cards  and 
spades,  picked  coal  and  treated  water,  and 
then  outclass  him  on  such  a  run.  If  we  leave 
the  hiring  to  the  different  trainmasters,  mas- 
ter mechanics,  or  agents,  we  may  have  mostly 
the  Irish  on  one  division,  mostly  the  Dutch 
on  another.  If  we  are  going  into  this  civil 
service  business  and  are  taking  men,  like  Fed- 
eral judges,  for  life  or  during  good  behavior, 
let's  have  a  long  list  of  waiting  eligibles  re- 
cruited for  each  division.  Let's  send  around 
periodically  a  car  with  an  examining  board 
from  central  headquarters  to  size  up  the  tal- 
ent recommended  by  local  officials.  Put  ex- 
perienced officials,  a  surgeon  and  an  oculist 
on  the  committee.     Show  your  trainmaster 

91 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

that  men  who  make  it  a  business  have  more 
time  than  he  to  keep  dudes  and  cigarette 
smokers  off  the  runboard  and  the  payroll; 
that  the  former  have  broader  opportunities 
than  he  to  develop  a  high  standard  of  require- 
ments. Let  the  ^committee  encourage  men 
already  employed  to  demonstrate  their  fitness 
for  transfer  to  other  departments  or  to  heavier 
divisions.  Let's  change  ends  with  our  rail 
and  put  it  where  it  will  do  the  most  good. 
The  employment  bureau,  the  recruiting  office, 
or  the  civil  service  commission  becomes  a 
necessity  to  every  large  organization.  Some 
roads  have  made  a  start  in  this  direction,  but 
it  is  only  a  start.  To  work  out  the  problem 
will  cost  us  money.  Yes,  but  less  than  we 
are  being  forced  to  pay  by  some  of  the  labor 
contracts  we  have  had  to  sign.  It  is  not  only 
more  graceful,  it  is  less  expensive,  this  lead- 
ing instead  of  being  driven. 

The  great  trouble  seems  to  be  in  this  matter 
of  civil  service  that  we  have  tried  to  accom- 
plish too  much  in  too  short  a  time.  An  indus- 
try whose  existence  does  not  antedate  the 
memory  of  men  still  living  cannot  hope  to 
have  struck  the  best  methods  already.  Yet 
it  can  be  too   cautious  in  building  Chinese 

92 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

walls  around  its  org-anization.  What  we  have 
been  striving  for  is  to  cultivate  a  company 
spirit,  to  improve  the  efficiency  of  the  service. 
We  have  felt  that  the  way  to  do  this  is  to 
make  our  men  feel  secure  in  their  positions,  to 
have  them  convinced  that  the  shakeup  made 
by  our  advent  is  the  last  they  will  ever  expe- 
rience. Have  we  not  chased  this  rainbow 
long  enough?  Should  we  not  back  up  and 
draw  some  of  the  spikes  we  have  put  in  the 
connection  switches?  It  is  one  thing  to  sit 
in  an  office  and  figure  that  the  importation,  of 
this  one  man  ought  not  to  make  anybody  un- 
easy. It  is  quite  another  to  make  the  thou- 
sands of  men  along  the  road  believe  that  we 
can  stick  to  the  original  package.  Blood  is 
thicker  than  water  and  the  new  man  will  have 
his  relatives  and  his  followers  or  the  followers 
of  his  friends.  If  he  is  too  thin-skinned,  fear 
of  criticism  may  prevent  his  bringing  in  some 
new  talent  that  would  be  of  real  benefit  to  his 
road.  He  is  blamed  if  he  does  and  blamed  if 
he  doesn't.  Whichever  course  he  pursues 
there  remains,  in  greater  or  less  degree,  that 
uncertainty  which  is  so  demoralizing.  Re- 
move this  uncertainty,  let  men  know  definitely 
what  to  expect,  and  you  are  over  the  hill  and 
closer  to  the  terminal. 
93 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official, 

The  old-fashioned  rule  of  promote  two  and 
hire  one  worked  mighty  well  on  some  roads 
for  conductors  and  enginemen.  In  these  days 
of  larger  systems  the  ratio  might  be  changed 
to  three  or  four  or  even  five  or  six  to  one. 
If  it  were  definitely  understood  that  every  so 
often,  say  ever}'  fifth  vacancy  in  certain  grades 
of  officials  and  employes,  a  man  would  cer- 
tainly be  selected  from  outside  the  service,  I 
believe  that  we  could  remove  the  feeling  of 
uncertainty.  We  would  in  a  large  measure 
attain  the  result  we  have  thus  far  missed.  We 
would  build  up  organizations  with  enough 
fresh  blood  to  stand  the  test  of  time. 

Brains  and  adaptability  are  not  a  natural 
monopoly.  God  Almighty  hasn't  given  any 
road  a  New  Jersey  charter  broad  enough  for 
incorporating  a  trust  of  the  most  efficient 
men.  No,  I  am  not  a  populist  or  a  socialist. 
I  believe  in  trusts.  They  have  come  to  stay 
and  ultimately  to  benefit  the  masses.  Legis- 
lation will  no  more  succeed  in  destroying 
them  than  it  did  in  preventing  partnerships  in 
England  where  centuries  ago  it  was  thought 
for  two  men  to  unite  as  partners  in  business 
was  an  unsafe  combination  of  power.  Educa- 
tion comes  by  hard  knocks  and  probably  anti- 

94 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

merg-er  decisions  are  worth  the  inconvenience 
that  they  have  caused.  The  sober  sense  of  the 
American  people  will  tell  them  after  a  while 
that  in  attempting  constitutional  and  legisla- 
tive interference  they  have  not  benefited 
themselves  one  dollar.  They  will  learn  that 
forcing  a  change  of  methods  does  not  neces- 
sarily bring  about  a  different  result.  They 
will  learn  that  in  the  long  run  they,  the  people, 
are  the  losers  when  good  capital  is  tied  up; 
that  they  pay  the  price  for  unwise  competi- 
tion. The  railroads,  the  first  great  trusts, 
should  be  early  to  realize  that  some  conditions 
inherently  forbid  the  elimination  of  compe- 
tition. Our  prairies  are  too  broad  for  an  agri- 
cultural trust.  The  range  of  the  human  mind 
is  too  great  for  any  railroad  to  patent  the 
ability  of  its  men. 

This  trust  freight  seems  to  make  you  full 
tonnage  without  cleaning  out  all  the  rush 
stuff  in  my  yard.  You  may  cut  off  ahead  of 
the  rest  of  the  civil  service  loads  and  I  will 
have  a  pony  set  on  your  caboose  when  you 
pull  through  the  ladder.  Yes,  I  will  tell  the 
operator  at  the  yard  office  to  scratch  them 
off  your  consist.  I  shall  have  to  run  another 
section  and  fill  out  with  some  cars  of  com- 

95 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

pany  material  which  the  construction  depart- 
ment is  kicking  about.  Please  put  up — 
excuse  me,  display — signals  until  the  dis- 
patcher can  get  hold  of  you  at  the  end  of  the 
double  track.  By  the  way,  if  instead  of  "will 
display  signals,  etc.,"  his  order  should  read, 
"will  signal,  etc.,"  would  it  not  be  shorter 
and,  including  flags,  lamps,  whistle  and  voice, 
be  more  comprehensive? 

Affectionately,  your  own 

D.  A.  D. 


q6 


LETTER   XV. 

MORE  ON  CIVIL  SERVICE. 

June  26,  1904. 

My  Dear  Boy : — ^We  were  speaking  of  rail- 
road civil  service,  so  called.  As  I  told  you 
before,  our  civil  service  is  so  far  from  the 
genuine  article  that  I  always  feel  like  qualify- 
ing the  term  in  some  way  for  fear  of  being 
called  in  on  the  carpet  for  failure  to  cut  the 
proper  duplex.  It  is  a  great  big  subject, 
worthy  of  the  most  serious  consideration,  be- 
cause it  concerns  men,  not  machines.  Fur- 
thermore, it  is  a  high  type  of  man  with  whom 
we  deal  or  should  deal.  We  are  all  so  busy 
that  we  say  we  concern  ourselves  with  re- 
sults. We  all  butt  in  too  much  on  details, 
usually  along  the  line  of  our  early  training. 
Yet,  withal,  we  overlook  some  pretty  long 
shots  because  we  flatter  ourselves  we  are  too 
busy  to  place  small  bets. 

Even  after  we  have  wasted  so  much  of  the 
building  season  that  we  give  the  contractor  a 
bonus  to  rush  the  new  line  to  completion  in 

97 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

time  to  hold  the  charter,  wouldn't  it  pay  us 
to  have  a  care  as  to  the  kind  of  men  we  let 
him  work  on  our  right  of  way?  Next  year, 
when  the  grievance  committees  come  up 
from  the  new  division,  we  make  them  feel 
that  it  means  something,  it  gives  them  a 
stamp  of  honor  to  work  for  our  system. 
.Why  not  begin  a  little  farther  back?  Why 
not  hook  up  in  the  beginning  so  that  our 
different  departments  can  get  busy  early  in 
the  game?  Let  the  people  who  are  to  settle 
the  new  country  help  build  and  maintain 
the  road.  Let  the  Immigration  agent  camp 
with  the  reconnoitering  engineer.  When  the 
latter  comes  back  to  locate  or  retrace,  let 
the  former  be  interesting  colonies.  Let  our 
own  organization  follow  the  surveyor's  flag. 
Let's  be  our  own  contractor  and  get  back 
more  of  the  money  he  disburses.  Why  let  a 
floating  gang  of  Dagoes  take  so  big  a  bunch 
of  it  back  to  sunny  Italy?  Why  not  spend 
it  ourselves  so  that  its  recipients  will  use  it 
to  develop  the  country  and  hurry  the  origi- 
nation of  traffic?  Let's  handle  this  coin  both 
going  and  coming  and  cut  out  some  of  the 
empty  haul. 

The    political    revolutions    in    continental 
98 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

Europe  and  the  famine  in  Ireland  in  1848 
brought  to  this  country  a  high  class  of  im- 
migrants. We  gave  them  work  and  schools. 
They  helped  build  the  railroads.  Some  con- 
tinued on  the  roads  after  construction ;  others 
helped  develop  the  surrounding  country. 
Our  flag  made  them  free,  and  when  civil  war 
came  they  were  among  the  bravest  of  its 
defenders.  To-day  their  children  and  their 
children's  children,  all  Americans,  rank  high 
among  railway  officials  and  employes.  Per- 
haps all  this  is  a  happen  so ;  perhaps  much  of 
it  is  due  to  big,  brainy  men  whose  policies 
were  not  narrowed  by  specialization  in  de- 
partments. We  are  now  doing  little  new  con- 
struction. We  should  do  it  better  than  ever 
and  in  the  full  sense  of  the  word.  Is  it 
enough  to  pass  it  up  to  the  construction  de- 
partment? 

Did  it  ever  strike  you  that  there  may  be 
many  good  reasons  why  both  officials  and 
employes  may  desire  to  transfer  to  another 
road?  A  young  man,  feeling  the  home  nest 
too  full,  the  local  demand  for  skilled  labor 
too  light,  has  struck  out  for  a  newer  coun- 
try. He  makes  good.  We  find  him  in  after 
years  running  an  engine,  working  a  trick,  or, 

99 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

perchance,  holding  down  an  official  job. 
Death  occurs  at  the  old  home.  Marriage 
brings  new  interests  in  another  country.  An 
invalid  member  of  his  family  needs  a  change 
of  climate.  An  unexpected  development  of  a 
chance  investment  in  a  remote  locality  de- 
mands occasional  personal  attention.  The 
orphaned  children  of  a  relative  claim  his  pro- 
tection. Any  one  of  a  dozen  praiseworthy 
motives  may  prompt  him  to  make  a  change, 
provided  he  can  continue  to  derive  his  main 
support  from  the  calling  to  which  he  has 
found  himself  adapted. 

Would  he  be  able  to  transfer  without  be- 
ginning over  again  at  the  bottom?  Between 
the  civil  service  of  the  companies  and  the 
seniority  of  the  brotherhoods  he  would  find 
it  like  making  a  hnk  and  pin  coupling  on  the 
inside  of  a  sharp  curve.  He  would  be  lucky  if 
he  could  get  a  regular  job  on  another  divi- 
sion of  the  same  system.  Let  him  persist  in 
suggestions  as  to  how  the  matter  may  be 
brought  about,  and  the  average  official,  hide- 
bound by  precedent,  will  consider  him  nutty, 
a  candidate  for  the  crazy  house  instead  of  for 
another  run.  Who  is  the  loser?  Not  only  the 
man,  but  the  company,  which  should  have  the 

100 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

benefit  of  his  wider  experience,  of  his  pecuHar 
interest  in  its  territory,  of  the  infusion  of 
fresh  blood  which  his  advent  would  mean. 

Suppose  an  official  has  resigned  for  any- 
good  personal  reason,  or  because  he  couldn't 
reduce  the  size  of  the  engine  nozzles  fast 
enough  to  suit  a  new  management.  When 
he  starts  out  to  hunt  a  job  his  brethren  of  the 
profession  receive  him  with  sympathy.  They 
promise  to  help  him  out.  Each  begs  him  to 
understand  how  impossible  it  is  for  him  to 
catch  the  pay  car  on  that  particular  line.  Per- 
haps his  informant  has  been  on  that  com- 
pany's payroll  only  six  months  himself,  but 
he  waxes  eloquent  on  the  benefits  of  civil 
service,  on  the  desirability  of  making  their 
own  men,  of  overcoming  previous  demorali- 
zation. This  would  be  amusing  if  it  were  not 
a  serious  business.  Each  seems  to  flatter  him- 
self that  he  got  aboard  because  of  peculiar 
personal  fitness,  and  inferentially  denies  such 
attribute  of  genius  in  the  man  on  the  outside. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  recognition  of  outside 
talent  is  usually  a  consequence,  of  acquaint- 
ance, of  happening  to  know  the  right  man 
at  the  right  time,  of  having  previously 
worked  with  the  appointing  official.    AH  this 

lOI 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

contains  too  much  of  the  element  of  chance. 
When  we  reserve  certain  vacancies  for  men 
outside  of  the  breastworks  and  select  them  in 
•advance  we  shall  get  better  results. 

We  have  made  our  civil  service  frogs  so 
stiff  that  our  discipline  has  climbed  the  rail. 
We  know  it  is  so  hard  for  a  conductor  or  an 
engineman  to  get  a  job  that  we  sometimes 
hesitate  too  long  before  we  make  an  example 
for  the  good  of  the  service  by  discharging  a 
flagrant  offender.  If  we  knew  that  by  and 
by  he  could  hit  on  some  road  the  vacancy 
reserved  for  outsiders  we  would  have  the  ben- 
efit of  the  change.  The  man  would  learn  a 
lesson,  would  not  be  debarred  from  his  occu- 
pation, and  would  give  better  service  on  an- 
other road.  Talk  with  your  employes  about 
this  and  you  will  be  astonished  to  find  how 
many  will  fall  in  with  this  idea  of  leaving 
open  a  door  of  hope  by  filling  just  so  many 
vacancies  with  outside  men. 

.Your  oi^cial  or  your  employe  seeking  a 
transfer  or  hunting  a  job  will  be  impressed 
with  the  fact  that  all  assistance  rendered  will 
be  with  a  view  to  favoring  him  because  he  is 
a  good,  worthy  fellow.  He  will  not  hear  it 
put  on  the  ground  that  any  company  is  for- 

103 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

tunate  to  have  his  services,  that  his  future  em- 
ployers are  being  especially  considered.  If  he 
has  known  from  boyhood  the  territory  and 
civilization  where  he  desires  to  work,  it  will 
not  be  urged  as  a  special  qualification.  Right 
here  is  where  the  most  of  us  fall  down.  We 
too  seldom  make  our  subordinates  feel  that 
we  are  the  gainers  by  having  them  in  our 
employ.  We  are  too  likely  to  make  them  feel 
they  are  lucky  to  have  a  job.  This  may  do 
for  the  indififerent  men,  but  it  puts  no  pre- 
mium on  superior  ability  and  loyalty.  It  ren- 
ders a  discharge,  when  made,  less  effective 
as  an  example.  You  cannot  treat  all  your 
men  alike  in  all  things.  In  a  few  things,  col- 
lisions, stealing,  booze-fighting,  for  example, 
you  have  to  do  so.  In  most  things  you  must 
avoid  destroying  individuality.  You  must 
build  up  personal  pride  in  each.  Even  sister 
jcngines  of  the  same  type  do  not  steam  or 
pull  exactly  alike.  Man,  made  in  the  image 
of  Deity,  has  pride,  brains  and  courage  to 
make  more  complex  his  disposition.  Corpo- 
rations have  no  souls.  Railroad  men  have 
souls  and  good  red  blood.  Their  intelligence 
is  an  inspiration ;  their  steadfastness,  a  psalm. 
Affectionately,  your  own 

D.  A.  D. 
103 


LETTER    XVI. 

THE   SUPPLY   TRAIN. 

July  3,  1904. 
My  Dear  Boy: — Blacksmiths'  horses  and 
shoemakers'  wives  proverbially  go  unshod. 
A  railroad  puts  up  its  poorest  sample  of  trans- 
portation in  the  routine  handling  of  its  own 
material  and  supplies.  Company  stuff  is 
moved  and  handled  last  of  all ;  and  probably 
at  maximum  expense.  For  example,  if  we 
wish  to  ship  a  car  of  wheels  to  division  head- 
quarters we  load  them  after  we  are  lucky 
enough  to  get  an  available  car.  Then  after 
proper  billing  authority  has  been  furnished 
we  go  through  some  more  red  tape,  so  that 
the  auditor  may  not  confuse  figs  with  thistles, 
revenue  producers  with  deadheads.  When 
we  happen  to  have  a  train  with  such  light 
tonnage  that  all  excuses  for  moving  the  car 
have  been  exhausted  it  reaches  the  yard  near- 
est its  destination.  The  master  mechanic's 
office  in  a  day  or  two  has  pounded  sufficiently 
at  the  yardmaster  to  get  the  car  set,  usually 
104 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

several  hours  after  it  has  been  promised.  It 
is  not  of  record  just  how  much  time  and 
money  have  been  wasted  by  the  mechanical 
department  through  not  having  the  car  when 
expected. 

If  our  administration  is  unusually  smooth 
we  may  be  able  to  load  our  scrap  wheels  on 
this  same  car.  Usually,  however,  we  wait 
until  the  car  has  been  hauled  down  the  line 
before  some  office  away  ofif  somewhere  gives 
disposition  for  the  wornout  material.  Or, 
having  unloaded  all  the  wheels,  we  wait  until 
next  week  before  we  order  in  another  car, 
and  go  through  the  same  performance  to 
ship  a  couple  of  pairs  to  some  junction  point 
on  the  same  division.  I  will  not  bore  you 
with  the  expensive  details  of  getting  a  car 
of  ties  loaded  and  distributed,  of  how  much 
time  the  sectionmen  are  worked  to  poor  ad- 
vantage because  the  car  or  material  failed 
to  show  up  when  expected. 

We,  mounted  on  wheels,  with  transporta- 
tion as  our  chief  asset,  let  our  own  business 
get  it  where  the  chicken  felt  the  axe,  where 
the  sharp  flange  caught  the  bum.  It  used 
to  be  more  comfortable  in  the  old  days.  We 
could  have  the  sectionmen  do  so  many  jobs 

105 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

without  its  seeming-  to  cost  anything.  The 
fact  that  we  have  learned  better  makes  me 
rash  enough  to  beHeve  that  we  may  yet  pro- 
gress beyond  thinking  that  some  of  our  own 
transportation  costs  Httle  or  nothing  because 
we  do  it  with  the  local  freight  or  a  switch 
engine.  We  haul  a  car  clear  over  the  divi- 
sion to  pick  up  a  few  pounds  of  scrap  paper; 
provided,  of  course,  the  agents  have  not  con- 
fused the  day  with  that  for  loading  dairy  line 
shipments.  The  weakness  in  handling  com- 
pany material  naturally  leads  to  a  distrust  by 
other  departments  and  a  desire  by  each  to 
control  the  distribution  of  its  own  supplies. 
Did  you  ever  think  in  what  a  haphazard, 
hit  or  miss  manner  we  handle  our  traveling 
workers?  The  scale  inspector  is  a  very  neces- 
sary individual  because  freight  revenue  is  a 
function  of  weight.  He  is  so  valuable  to  us 
that,  although  the  test  car  is  a  nuisance  in 
trains  and  yards,  we  haul  him  hundreds  of 
miles  to  do  a  few  minutes'  or  a  few  hours' 
work.  If  he  should  try  to  do  any  other  com- 
pany business;  if  he  should  repair  furniture, 
solicit  traffic,  inspect  ties  or  examine  inter- 
locking plants,  he  would  infringe  on  the  pre- 
rogatives of  other  men  who  earn  salaries  by 
io6 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

riding  much  and  working  little.  Yes,  I  know 
we  must  have  departments.  Our  great  task 
is  to  work  them  to  the  best  advantage;  to 
let  them  overlap  a  little  when  business  is  dull, 
or  where  local  conditions  permit.  We  should 
switch  our  departments  together  so  that  we 
can  cut  in  the  air  on  enough  to  hold  the  train 
without  going  after  expenses  with  a  club. 

The  employe  who  does  not  receive  supplies 
regularly,  whose  requisitions  for  stationery 
are  arbitrarily  cut,  will  try  to  get  enough 
ahead  to  keep  himself  from  running  out. 
When  you  take  an  inventory  you  must  fig- 
ure on  removing  the  temptation  for  every- 
one to  hold  back  full  returns  for  fear  of  not 
rendering  good  service  in  the  future.  With 
a  lot  of  money  tied  up  in  supplies  at  central 
or  division  storehouses  our  service  often  suf- 
fers, even  accidents  occur  for  want  of  a  lan- 
tern globe,  or  a  few  gallons  of  oil.  The  aver- 
age local  freight  crew  has  no  more  compunc- 
tions in  replenishing  the  caboose  from  a  can 
of  oil  consigned  to  a  country  agent  than  did 
the  slave  in  taking  chickens.  It  all  belongs 
to  the  company,  Massa's  chicken,  massa's 
niggah.  Some  roads  are  now  distributing  oil 
to  sections  and  to  small  stations  from  a  box 
107 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

car  fitted  with  inside  tanks  and  self-register- 
ing pumps,  a  very  economical  arrangement. 
This  car  runs  on  the  local  freight  at  fixed 
times.  The  next  step  has  been  to  put  with 
it  supply  cars,  handled  by  the  oil  man,  who 
issues  supplies  and  tools  to  agents,  section 
foremen  and  pumpers.  A  stationery  car 
comes  next  in  the  outfit.  This  progressive 
development  is  hampered  in  most  cases  by 
adherence  to  the  time-honored  requisition. 
It  does  not  promote  a  good  company  spirit 
in  an  agent  to  haul  by  him  a  car  filled  with 
supplies  and  deny  him  a  much-needed  broom, 
a  comfort-giving  pane  of  glass,  simply  be- 
cause a  requisition  has  not  passed  through 
the  prescribed  number  of  chief  clerks'  ofifice 
baskets.  Issues  are  for  the  good  of  the  serv- 
ice, not  for  charity.  The  best  way  is  to  re- 
quire a  division  official  to  accompany  the 
cars  on  his  division,  hold  him  responsible, 
and  make  his  check  good  on  our  traveling 
bank.  Let  the  employe  sign  on  a  line  in  a 
book  for  articles  received,  just  as  an  agent 
receipts  to  an  express  messenger,  and  let 
the  official  countersign  once  for  all  the  em- 
ployes on  a  page.  Then  you  have  the  econ- 
omy and  benefits  of  centralization  without 
jo8 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official, 

the  demoralizing  interference  with  local  ad- 
ministration. 

The  supply  cars  are  only  a  beginning.  The 
evolution  must  be  a  supply  and  inspection 
train  run  exclusively  for  company  business, 
and  to  do  ever}^  practicable  kind  of  com- 
pany business.  It  should  supply  every  de- 
partment and  pick  up  the  surplus  and  scrap 
in  each.  It  should  run  over  as  many  divi- 
sions as  feasible,  giving  It  time  to  return  and 
restock  so  as  to  cover  Its  territory'  at  pre- 
scribed intervals,  say  every  thirty  or  sixty 
days.  This  train  should  be  manned  by  monthly 
company  men,  preferably  of  the  semi-official 
class.  The  position  of  fireman  should  be 
part  of  the  course  of  a  special  apprentice.  If 
no  special  apprentice  Is  available  for  engine- 
man,  use  the  man  in  mind  for  the  next  va- 
cancy as  road  foreman.  Let  the  scale  In- 
spector be  the  flagman.  For  conductor  have 
a  coming  trainmaster,  not  afraid  to  pull  off 
his  coat  to  help  adjust  a  scale  or  to  unload  a 
'keg  of  track  spikes.  Have  an  ambitious  brake- 
man  for  train  clerk,  whose  records  would 
replace  requisitions  and  waybllllng.  For 
pilot  use  the  superintendent,  the  trainmaster, 
the  chief  dispatcher,  the  master  mechanic, 
109 


Letters  From  A  R.\ilway  Official. 

the  road  foreman,  the  division  engineer,  or 
the  supervisor.  Have  as  many  as  possible  of 
those  last  named  accompany  the  train  and 
give  the  division  a  rigid  inspection.  Pretty 
soon  you  would  find  the  general  superin- 
tendent frequently  hitching  his  car  to  this 
train.  Put  the  contents  of  the  train  in  charge 
of  a  high-class  travehng  storekeeper.  On  the 
ground  the  employe  would  indicate  his  re- 
quirements, the  division  official  would  recom- 
mend, and  the  traveling  storekeeper,  closely 
in  touch  with  the  management  and  its  pol- 
icies, would  take  final  action.  Whatever  hap- 
pened to  be  done,  it  would  be  right  up  to  date, 
and  in  accordance  with  existing  needs.  Arriv- 
ing at  a  roundhouse,  the  train  itself  would 
spot  a  car  of  wheels  and  a  car  of  oil,  taking 
care  to  reload  scrap  wheels  and  empty  oil  bar- 
rels. In  general  do  not  issue  a  new  article  un- 
less an  unserviceable  one  is  turned  in.  The 
recollections  of  those  present  will  make  fresher 
the  record  of  expendable  articles  issued  on  a 
previous  trip.  Long  range  requisitions,  ap- 
proved by  distant  authority,  may  result  in 
false  economy,  in  a  lack  of  clearly  defined  re- 
sponsibility. The  essence  of  good  adminis- 
tration consists  in  dealing  with    men    and 

no 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

things,  in  giving  them  greater  value  than 
their  paper  symbols.  If  love  for  requisitions 
should  still  linger  in  the  official  breast,  the 
proprieties  of  such  chaste  affection  could  be 
preserved  by  going  through  all  the  forms 
until  their  absurdity  is  fully  demonstrated. 

The  supply  train  should  have  a  car  fitted 
up  as  a  workshop  in  which  a  handy  man 
could  repair  station  trucks,  office  chairs,  lan- 
terns, switch  lamps,  etc.,  etc.,  and  save  ship- 
ping many  miles  for  a  new  part.  Many  tools 
and  utensils  would  last  longer  if,  in  some 
such  way,  they  could  receive  the  stitch  in 
time  that  saves  nine.  Prompt  repair  and  in- 
terchange among  various  points  should  di- 
minish investment  in  reserve  supply.  An  ar- 
ticle should  not  have  to  be  returned  to  the 
place  where  previously  used.  Under  present 
methods  the  return  journey  may  put  it  in 
worse  shape  than  when  first  sent  in.  When 
repaired  it  should  be  issued  wherever  it  will 
do  the  most  good. 

Another  car  in  the  supply  train  should  be  a 
laboratory  in  charge  of  the  superintendent  of 
tests  or  his  representative,  whose  office  would 
thus  get  fnore  closely  in  touch  with  division 
officials  and  with  service  conditions.  The 
III 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

scrap  car,  with  Its  broken  side  rods,  its  worn- 
out  shovels,  its  twisted  drills,  might  mean  a 
whole  lot  in  connection  with  arbitrary  theo- 
retical tests. 

With  the  train,  on  stated  trips,  should  be 
the  employment  bureau.  Pick  up  candidates, 
haul  them  over  the  division.  Talk  with  them, 
note  their  adaptability  in  strange  surround- 
ings, see  of  how  promising  a  stretch  is  the 
rubber  in  their  necks.  Give  them  transpor- 
tation back  home  and,  if  desired,  tell  them 
to  report  again  next  trip  for  further  exam- 
ination. 

When  your  supply  train  has  to  tie  up 
away  from  a  night  roundhouse,  let  the  crew 
take  short  turns  as  watchmen.  Incidentally 
the  train  might  serve  as  an  object  lesson  as 
to  the  endurance  and  capacity  of  men,  the 
length  of  runs,  and  the  care  of  an  engine. 
If  your  labor  contracts  do  not  permit  you 
to  man  your  own  train,  do  the  necessary 
toward  an  amendment  of  such  unwise  sched- 
ules. 

The  more  you  think  of  the  increased  effi- 
ciency of  the  service,  of  the  ultimate  econ- 
omy, of  the  smoother  administration,  the 
more  you  will  cuddle  up  to  the  notion  of  a 

112 


Letters  From  A  R.\ilway  Official. 

company  train.  Experience  will  show  the 
wisdom  or  unwisdom  of  numerous  details 
that  will  suggest  themselves.  I  have  given 
you  only  an  outline  with  a  few  samples  of 
methods  to  be  pursued.  I  want  you  to  think 
out  the  rest  for  yourself.  It  is  theory  to-day, 
but  the  theory  of  to-day  is  the  forerunner  of 
practice  a  few  years  hence. 

Afifectionately,  your  own 

D.  A.  D. 


113 


LETTER   XVII. 

WHAT  THE   BIG  ENGINE  HAS  COST. 

July  10,  1904. 
My  Dear  Boy: — The  progressive  president 
of  a  rustling  railroad  has  recently  gone  on 
record  as  regretting  the  too  rapid  introduc- 
tion of  big  engines.  To  which  from  many  an 
ancient  office,  from  many  a  greasy  round- 
house comes  a  loud  amen.  The  fad  for  big 
engines,  the  slavery  to  the  ton  mile,  the  rack 
of  the  comparative  statement,  have  cost  the 
granger  roads  a  pile  of  good  coin.  Procrus- 
tes, the  highwayman  of  the  ancients,  fitted  all 
his  victims  to  stone  beds,  doubtless  charging 
to  other  expenses  the  stretching  of  an  arm 
or  the  cutting  off  of  a  foot.  Nowadays  we 
get  our  brains  warped  and  our  legs  pulled 
just  the  same.  The  methods  are  more  subtle, 
the  operations  more  graceful.  Our  equanim- 
ity stands  for  almost  any  old  thing,  provided 
it  is  done  in  the  name  of  progress,  or  is  called 
a  process  of  analysis.  Able  men  devote  their 
lives  to  the  solution  of  problems  of  practical 
114 


Letters  From  A  R.\il\vay  Official. 

railroad  operation,  to  making  maximum  net 
earnings  for  their  emploj'ers,  only  to  be  dis- 
counted by  the  financial  writers.  Fools  rush 
in  where  angels  fear  to  tread.  Tlie  same 
writers  who,  to  hear  them  tell  it,  can  save 
financial  panics  by  sound  advice  to  the  coun- 
try bankers,  who  can  instruct  our  Uncle  Sam- 
uel how  to  handle  his  navy,  who  can  hurry 
Russian  troops  to  Manchuria,  can  tell  us  just 
how  to  run  our  railroad,  just  how  many  tons 
we  should  pull  per  train.  Invention  is  the 
handmaiden  of  progress.  Inventors  are  usu- 
ally laymen  or  outsiders.  Inventors  and  arch- 
itects have  to  be  held  in  check  to  prevent  de- 
velopment from  becoming  abnormal  or  one- 
sided. The  man  who  invented  the  air  brake 
was  not  asked  to  come  in  and  take  charge  of 
all  transportation.  The  men  who  design  big 
engines  should  not  be  allowed  to  forget  con- 
ditions of  track,  territory  and  traffic. 

Railroads  are  run  to  make  money.  A  mo- 
tion to  manage  them  like  golf  links  is  never 
in  order.  The  track  is  built  for  running 
trains.  To  the  man  with  too  much  ton  mile 
on  the  brain  the  running  of  a  train,  the  very 
object  of  the  road's  existence,  becomes  a 
bugaboo.      He   will   sacrifice  business,   incur 

115 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

risks  of  other  losses,  rather  than  run  a  train. 
In  some  cases  this  is  all  right,  in  others  it  is; 
all  wrong.  There  is  a  happy  medium  which 
all  of  us  should  be  allowed  to  work  out  for 
ourselves,  to  suit  our  own  conditions.  The 
trouble  is  that  we  are  denied  a  sliding  scale. 
All  roads  look  alike  to  the  critic,  the  reviewer 
and  the  broker. 

Roads  of  dense  traffic  with  much  low-class 
freight,  such  as  coal,  coke,  ore,  pig  iron,  etc., 
to  move,  found  it  more  economical  to  have 
large  engines  and  heavy  trains.  The  nature  of 
the  business  demands  a  considerable  supply 
always  on  hand.  This  permits  waiting  for  full 
tonnage  for  every  train.  A  few  cars,  more 
or  less,  at  one  end  or  the  other  of  the  line 
make  no  great  difference  to  the  shipper. 
These  roads  usually  have  more  than  one 
track  and  an  old  solid  roadbed.  This  good 
thing  of  economical  transportation  was 
pushed  along  to  us  of  the  prairies.  Here 
traffic  is  relatively  thin,  the  track  with  dirt 
ballast  is  less  solid,  hauls  are  many  times 
longer,  and  single  track  is  the  rule.  More- 
over, we  frequently  have  merchandise,  imple- 
ments, machinery  and  other  high-class  freight 
in  one  direction,  and  such  perishable  stuff  as 
ii6 


Letters  From  A  R.\il\vay  Official. 

live  stock  and  dressed  meats  in  the  other.  A 
dozen  years  ago  we  had  developed  a  combi- 
nation freight  and  passenger  engine,  usually 
a  ten-wheeler  with  fairly  high  drivers,  which 
handled  such  business  promptly  and  profit- 
ably. \Ve  could  take  out  a  Raymond  excur- 
sion or  a  theatrical  special  one  way,  and  com- 
ing back  make  a  fly  run  with  belated  stock 
for  a  distant  market.  We  may  yet  do  the 
same  with  the  compound  battleship,  but  it 
will  first  require  alterations  and  a  big  expen- 
diture on  track.  When  stock  shows  up  you 
must  get  it  moving.  You  cannot  hold  it  to 
club  trains,  as  in  the  case  of  coal  and  pig  iron. 
You  miss  the  market  and  there  is  a  big  claim 
to  pay,  to  which  the  financial  gentleman  in 
New  York  does  not  give  sufficient  weight 
when  he  makes  his  wonderful  analysis  of  our 
figures.  It  does  not  show  up  in  grate  sur- 
face, tractive  power,  or  weight  on  the  drivers. 
It  is  not  complimentary  to  our  wisdom  that 
stock  shippers  have  been  compelled  to  in- 
voke State  aid  to  force  us  to  run  stock  trains 
regardless  of  full  tonnage,  to  do  what  our 
own  best  interests  demanded.  We  should 
avoid  the  necessity  for  even  a  just  regula- 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

tion  of  onr  affairs.  It  opens  the  door  to  much 
that  is  unjust  and  undesirable. 

The  big  engine  has  made  us  straighten 
curves,  reduce  grades,  relay  rail,  renew 
bridges,  buy  land,  increase  terminals,  extend 
passing  tracks,  abandon  light  equipment  and 
increase  wages.  Its  presence  on  single-track 
roads  has  retarded  traffic  and  has  increased 
expenses.  It  has  torn  up  our  track  and  in- 
creased the  number  of  wrecks.  Its  long  hours 
and  trying  work  have  been  an  element  of  de- 
moralization among  our  men.  The  efficiency 
of  our  crews  is  limited  to  the  endurance  of 
the  fireman.  This  last  condition  must  be 
remedied  by  an  automatic  stoker — the  most 
crying  need  of  the  present.  Supply  usually 
keeps  pretty  close  to  demand  and  the  auto- 
matic stoker  should  not  be  very  long  in 
coming. 

Yes,  directly  and  indirectly,  the  big  en- 
gine has  cost  us  a  lot  of  dough.  It  is  not 
an  unmixed  evil.  It  has  its  good  points,  to 
be  sure.  Some  of  the  new  conditions  it  has 
forced  would  have  come  in  time  an}^vay.  Its 
advantages  would  be  greater,  its  operation 
cheaper,  if  its  coming  could  have  been  broken 
to  us  more  gently.  It  is  now  a  condition, 
ii8 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

not  a  theory,  and  we  must  do  our  best  with 
it,  regardless  of  our  personal  predilections. 
Whether  or  not  it  has  come  to  stay,  is  an  open 
question.  It  probably  has,  but  modified  for 
higher  speed,  when  all  conditions  permit. 
We  are  not  yet  wise  enough  to  know  just 
what  it  is  costing  us.  Not  even  our  own 
statisticians  have  had  time  to  digest  fully  the 
figures  of  increased  equipment  due  to  slower 
movement ;  of  increased  cost  of  maintenance, 
both  of  track  and  equipment;  of  unparalleled 
increase  in  freight  claims;  of  higher  wages; 
of  strengthened  power  of  the  labor  organi- 
zations; of  altered  trade  conditions  due 
to  dissatisfaction  with  transportation;  of 
changed  location  of  industrial  plants;  of  the 
efifect  of  reduced  speed  on  w^ater  competi- 
tion ;  of  the  numerous  conditions  that  go  to 
make  a  railroad  so  complex.  In  the  language 
of  the  good  old  funeral  hymn,  some  time 
we'll  understand. 

We  must  make  up  our  minds  to  prompter 
movement  of  freight,  which  may  mean  in- 
creased speed.  The  people  demand  it  and 
pubHc  opinion  is  king.  Here  again  the  ship- 
per steps  in  to  help  us  out,  for  promptness 
simplifies  our  terminal  problems.    The  art  of 

119 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

war  has  been  defined  as  getting  the  mostest 
men  there  the  fustest.  The  art  of  railroading 
comes  to  mean  moving  the  mostest  trains 
the  soonest. 

Affectionately,  your  own 

D.  A.  D. 


1-20 


LETTER    XVIII. 

BE   A    SUPERINTENDENT — NOT   A    NURSE. 

July  17,  1904. 
My  Dear  Boy : — I  am  so  sure  that  you  will 
be  a  general  manager  some  day  that  I  have 
been  writing  you  a  good  deal  of  advice  as  to 
matters  that  are  above  the  control  of  a  di- 
vision superintendent.  As  a  rule,  however, 
a  man  will  fill  any  position  better  if  he  has 
a  good  conception  of  the  work  that  is  be- 
yond his  own  sphere.  Some  people  do  not 
like  to  hire  an  ex-ofificial  for  work  subordinate 
to  positions  that  he  may  previously  have 
held.  They  fear  that  the  old  superintendent 
who  gets  aboard  as  yardmaster  or  dispatcher 
will  be  a  nuisance,  that  he  will  be  all  the  time 
scheming  for  promotion,  that  he  may  try  to 
dictate  to  his  superiors,  that  he  will  have  too 
much  dignity  to  climb  a  side  ladder,  that  he 
will  be  only  temporary,  that  they  will  soon 
be  put  to  the  trouble  of  breaking  in  another 
man.  All  of  which  is  narrow  and  shows  in 
the  aforesaid  objectors  a  lack  of  confidence 

121 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

in  themselves  and  in  their  own  organization. 
It  all  depends  on  the  man  himself.  If  he  is 
the  right  stufif  he  will  take  a  broader  view  for 
having  been  an  official.  He  will  appreciate 
the  difficulties  of  his  superiors.  His  desire 
to  make  good  should  induce  him  to  put  forth 
maximum  effort.  He  may  be  able  to  get  his 
men  out  of  ruts  of  many  years'  standing.  It 
is  so  seldom  that  we  get  fresh  blood  we 
should  be  thankful  that  circumstances  permit 
us  to  get  a  three-hundred-dollar  man  to  work 
for  one  hundred.  He  may  be  only  temporary 
for  that  position,  but  if  he  makes  us  money 
we  should  be  willing  to  be  incommoded  later 
on.  It  is  a  selfish  fear,  this  feeling  that  by  and 
by  our  royal  selves  may  suffer  the  personal 
inconvenience  of  having  to  look  after  a  cer- 
tain part  of  our  machine  that  we  thought  was 
running  itself.  Vain  hope,  this  looking  for 
any  kind  of  perpetual  motion.  We  are  paid 
official  salaries  to  be  big  enough  to  tower 
over  such  lazy  feelings,  over  our  own  per- 
sonal disinclination  to  exertion.  Let  me  re- 
peat, once  more,  that  for  every  position  you 
should  have  an  understudy.  Then  if  anybody 
drops  out  through  promotion  or  otherwise 
your  task  is  a  simple  one. 
12;? 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

A  fact  that  none  of  us  should  overlook  is 
that  we  all  have  superiors.  The  president  re- 
ports to  the  directors,  and  the  latter  to  the 
stockholders.  The  stockholder,  big  or  lit- 
tle, is  his  or  her  majesty,  the  citizen.  Our 
superiors  must  know  what  we  are  doing. 
They  will  not  butt  in  and  give  us  so  many 
directions  if  we  just  keep  them  advised  of 
our  progress.  Your  general  superintendent 
is  an  able  man,  but  neither  you  nor  he  is  a 
mental  telegrapher.  After  you  get  the  sur- 
geons called,  the  wreck  train  started,  the 
general  superintendent  should  be  the  next 
man  to  have  the  wire.  Tell  him  briefly  what 
has  happened,  what  you  have  done,  are  do- 
ing and  expect  to  do.  If  conditions  are  such 
that  it  is  wise  for  you  to  go  to  the  wreck  or 
the  washout  yourself,  wire  him  that  you  are 
on  the  ground.  Don't  think  this  is  enough, 
but  every  half  hour  or  so  tell  him  how  you 
are  getting  along.  He  will  feel  better  and 
the  officials  above  him  will  feel  better.  You 
will  feel  better  because,  if  they  are  wise,  they 
will  let  you  alone  and  not  bother  you  with 
instructions.  Above  all  things  do  not  try 
to  pass  responsibility  up  higher  by  asking 
what  to  do.  Tell  the  general  superintendent 
123 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

what  trains  you  will  detour,  what  equipment 
you  will  need  from  other  divisions  for  stub 
runs,  what  you  have  requested  your  neigh- 
bors to  do.  War  has  been  declared,  the  writs 
of  the  courts  have  ceased  to  run.  You  are 
the  general  in  the  field  and  it  is  all  up  to  you. 
From  the  moment  that  you  are  wideawake 
enough  to  answer  the  telephone  at  the  head 
of  your  bed,  your  brain  should  be  earning 
your  company  many  dollars  a  minute.  As 
you  slip  into  your  clothes,  think  connectedly 
where  all  available  men  and  material  are  to 
be  had.  As  you  rush  over  to  the  office,  fig- 
ure what  the  situation  needs  to  protect  the 
morning  suburban  trains.  When  you  see  the 
train  sheet,  tell  the  dispatcher  what  trains 
should  be  kept  on  time  as  long  as  possible, 
what  trains  should  be  tied  up  to  prevent  a 
blockade.  Don't  sit  down  and  take  the  key, 
or  act  as  call  boy  or  for  one  second  forget 
that  you  are  the  superintendent,  that  the 
v/hole  push  looks  to  you.  The  cooler  your 
manner,  the  less  hesitating  your  instructions, 
the  greater  the  confidence  of  your  men  in 
you  and  in  themselves,  the  better  their  work. 
Arriving  at  the  scene  of  trouble,  size  up 
the  situation,  reassure  the  panic-stricken  pas- 

i?4 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

sengers,  organize  everybody  present,  give  po- 
litely all  the  information  you  have,  how  many 
hours  passengers  will  be  delayed,  what  train 
will  come  to  take  them  forward,  when  their 
baggage  can  be  expected.  Be  cool  but  sym- 
pathetic; alert,  but  polite.  In  a  few  minutes 
your  presence  for  good  will  be  felt.  Tell  the 
wreckmaster  what  to  do  first,  but  do  not  try 
to  handle  his  men.  Resist  the  temptation  to 
use  an  axe  or  shovel  yourself.  Do  not  shrink 
from  the  sight  of  blood.  Lead  the  relief  par- 
ties, but  do  not  try  to  be  surgeon  or  nurse. 
Let  the  others  do  the  lifting  of  the  killed  or 
injured.  You  do  your  work  with  your  brains 
and  with  your  voice.  Be  a  superintendent. 
Care  first  for  the  injured  and  the  dead.  Then 
look  to  the  comfort  of  the  other  passengers. 
Next  in  importance  comes  the  mails,  then  the 
express  and  the  baggage.  Do  not  give  any 
grand  stand  orders  to  burn  cars  or  roll  heavy 
equipment  down  the  bank.  Think  twice  be- 
fore you  destroy  more  property.  The  line 
must  be  opened,  but  conditions  may  be  such 
that  an  extra  hour  or  two  will  not  complicate 
the  situation,  and  will  save  the  company 
thousands  of  dollars.  Men  often  earn  big 
salaries  by  the  things  they  avoid  doing. 

125 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

When  the  work  has  been  organized,  circu- 
late among  the  gangs,  give  each  foreman  a 
word  of  praise,  tell  them  all  that  you  have 
ordered  coffee  and  sandwiches,  that  the  com- 
pany also  gives  its  men  square  meals  at 
wrecks.  Arrange  to  feed  your  transferred 
passengers  earlier  rather  than  later  than 
usual.  Do  not  hesitate  to  feed  badly  delayed 
passengers  at  the  company's  expense.  When 
everything  is  running  smoothly  keep  your 
mouth  shut  and  your  ears  open.  As  the 
country  people  come  flocking  in  to  see  the 
wreck,  as  the  roadmaster  yells  his  orders, 
you  will  hear  some  sweetheart  ask  her  swain 
if  that  is  the  superintendent  who  has  such  a 
big  voice.  When  he  shakes  his  head  and  the 
wreckmaster  roars  to  take  a  fresh  hitch,  she 
guesses  again,  only  to  be  told  that  the  quiet 
man  over  there  with  apparently  the  least  to 
say  is  the  boss  of  all.  Soon  many  of  the  by- 
standers are  pointing  admiringly  at  you  as 
the  master  of  the  situation.  When  it  is  all 
over,  when,  hours  or  days  later,  you  lie  down 
for  a  well-earned  rest,  you  will  feel  that  you 
are  a  railroad  man,  that  you  are  holding 
down  a  job  for  which  no  old  woman  need 
apply.  There  is  some  self-satisfaction  in  this 
126 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

world  which  outruns  the  pay  car,  which  can- 
not be  measured  in  dollars  and  cents. 

What  I  am  telling  you  holds  good  for  a 
trainmaster,  a  yardmaster  or  whoever  hap- 
pens to  be  the  senior  representative  present. 
Sometimes  it  is  better  to  send  out  the  train- 
master and  stay  in  yourself  to  handle  an  al- 
ready congested  situation.  Sometimes  the 
trainmaster  is  at  the  wrong  end  of  the  line 
and  you  must  go  yourself.  Common  sense 
is  a  pretty  safe  guide  as  to  one's  course  of 
action.  The  principle  to  be  remembered  is 
to  avoid  interference  with  the  man  on  the 
ground.  If  it  is  a  minor  derailment  which 
the  conductor  is  handling,  do  not  rattle  him 
with  messages,  with  requests  for  reports. 
When  you  examine  your  conductors  on  rules, 
include  questions  and  explanations  which 
outline  action  expected  in  emergencies.  For- 
bid your  dispatcher  sending  a  stereotyped 
message  to  get  written  statements  of  all  wit- 
nesses every  time  a  personal  injury  occurs. 
Have  your  conductors,  your  agents  and  your 
section  foremen  so  drilled  that  they  will  keep 
the  office  informed  and  will  depend  on  them- 
selves, not  on  the  dispatchers,  for  such  things. 
Your  rules,  your  organization,  the  instruc- 
127 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

tions  on  your  blanks  will  amount  to  little  if 
they  are  continually  discounted  by  special 
messages.  You  had  better  lose  a  set  of  re- 
ports than  tear  your  organization  to  pieces. 
When  somebody  falls  down,  discipline  him 
in  such  a  way  that  the  others  will  keep  in  line. 
It  takes  patience  and  persistence,  forbear- 
ance and  firmness  to  drill  men  to  a  high  state 
of  discipline.  Disobedience  and  indifference 
can  sometimes  be  traced  to  unwise  orders. 
The  impossible  or  the  unreasonable  is  ex- 
pected. There  are  too  many  bulletins  and 
too  many  instructions.  Do  not  think  a  thing 
is  done,  an  abuse  corrected,  a  condition  rem- 
edied simply  because  you  have  given  an  or- 
der to  produce  the  desired  effect.  It  is  up 
to  you  to  follow  the  matter  to  a  finish.  You 
must  know  by  observation,  by  inspection,  by 
the  reports  of  your  staff,  that  your  order  is 
being  obeyed.  The  way  to  enforce  discipline 
is  not  to  keep  repeating  the  order.  Except 
in  rare  cases  an  order  should  not  be  re- 
peated or  a  bulletin  reissued.  Weak  men  try 
to  strengthen  their  discipline  by  extravagant 
language  in  their  instructions.  Do  not  say 
that  no  excuse  will  be  taken  for  failure  to 
turn  in  these  reports  or  to  comply  with  these 
128 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

instructions.  Yo«  may  be  made  to  appear 
ridiculous,  even  mendacious,  by  a  cloudburst, 
by  a  holdup,  by  an  act  of  God  or  the  public 
enemy,  as  the  old  .law  phrase  runs.  Vitality 
in  expression  is  a  good  thing.  It  is  useless 
without  vigor  in  enforcement.  The  latter 
does  not  depend  upon  the  kind  of  breakfast 
food  you  order  in  the  dining  car,  but  upon  the 
ginger  in  your  administration. 

Affectionately,  your  own 

D.  A.  D. 


129 


LETTER  XIX. 

THE  RACK  OF  THE  COMPARATIVE  STATEMENT. 

July  24,  1904. 
My  Dear  Boy: — You  ask  what  I  mean  by 
the  rack  of  the  comparative  statement.  I 
mean  that,  figuratively  speaking-,  we  are  all 
pretty  securely  fastened  to  the  corresponding- 
month  of  last  year.  What  was  originally 
intended  as  a  tavernkeeper's  tab,  as  a  rough 
check  on  operation,  has  become  a  balanced 
ledger,  a  rigid  standard  of  efficiency.  Time, 
even  a  short  period,  brings  a  sacredness  to 
all  things.  If  we  make  a  so-called  better 
showing  on  paper  than  a  twelvemonth  pre- 
vious, we  shake  hands  with  ourselves  and  for- 
get how  rotten  we  were  considered  just  one 
short  year  ago.  The  ball  team  that  wins  the 
championship  and  takes  the  big  gate  receipts 
is  the  one  whose  members  play  for  the  side 
rather  than  for  high  individual  averages. 
The  tendency  is  for  our  owners  to  expect  us 
to  make  base  hits  rather  than  send  in  runs 
which  win  games. 

130 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

If  in  April  and  May  we  have  a  lot  of  ties  on 
hand,  we  may  not  be  allowed  to  put  them  in 
the  track  because  they  will  be  charged  out  be- 
fore June  30,  and  make  too  heavy  a  showing 
of  expenditure  for  the  fiscal  year.  So,  with 
labor  comparatively  plentiful  and  the  weather 
comfortable,  we  wait  until  the  new  fiscal  year 
comes  in,  until  the  sun  shines  hottest  on  the 
track.  Then,  with  farmers  paying  harvest 
wages  we  have  to  ofYer  more  money.  If  we 
get  the  extra  men  the  heat  lessens  their  effi- 
ciency. It  is  true  we  have  probably  had  to 
pay  the  producer  for  the  ties,  but  if  we  fail 
to  charge  them  to  the  final  account,  we  have 
a  childlike  confidence  that  they  have  not  yet 
cost  us  anything.  The  little  matters  of  fail- 
ure to  utilize  the  full  life  of  the  tie,  of  inter- 
est on  the  money  invested,  we  dismiss  with 
the  thought  that  trifling  losses  must  be  ex- 
pected in  the  conduct  of  large  affairs. 

Maintenance  of  equipment  as  well  as  main- 
tenance of  way  suffers  from  too  much  com- 
parative statement.  Some  new  official  pulls 
our  power  to  pieces  to  show  us  how  they 
used  to  build  up  train-mile  records  on  the  Far 
Eastern.  The  crowded  rip  tracks  reflect  the 
tractive  power  of  the  big  engines.     Bad  or- 

131 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

ders,  the  bane  of  a  yardmaster's  life,  the  teas- 
ers of  the  traffic  man's  tracers,  block  our 
terminals.  Our  shopmen  and  our  car  repair- 
ers, despairing  of  full  time,  move  away.  Yet 
withal  we  are  serene,  for  are  not  we  operating 
just  as  cheaply  as  they  did  at  this  time  last 
year? 

When  I  am  in  doubt,  when  I  become  mixed 
with  the  complexities  of  our  profession,  I  go 
back  to  my  boyhood  on  the  farm.  From 
that  gateway  as  a  basing  point  I  can  think 
out  a  rate  sheet  with  fewer  differentials.  The 
same  common  sense  housekeeping  which  my 
mother  practiced  will  fit  any  railroad,  how- 
ever diversified  its  territory.  The  same  well- 
balanced  management  which  enabled  my 
father  to  pay  off  the  mortgage  and  extend 
his  acres  is  suited  to  any  railroad,  however 
complicated  its  financial  obligations.  The 
bigger  the  proposition,  the  greater  the  need 
for  sticking  to  homely  basic  principles.  We 
learned  on  the  farm  to  expect  about  so  much 
rainfall  every  year.  Whether  the  heaviest 
would  come  in  one  month  or  in  another,  the 
good  Lord  never  found  time  to  tell  us.  We 
did  the  things  that  came  to  hand,  sometimes 
similarly,  sometimes  differently,  from  the  cor- 

132 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

responding  month  of  the  previous  year.  If 
our  crops  were  short  we  did  not  starve  our 
work  horses.  We  sometimes  found  it  paid, 
even  with  a  poor  crop  in  sight,  to  go  to  the 
bank  and  borrow  rather  than  neglect  the 
ditching  in  a  wet  field.  If  we  made  some  sur- 
plus money  we  did  not  blow  it  all  in  for  tools 
and  improvements.  We  knew  that  the  in- 
evitable lean  years  preclude  throwing  the  fat 
in  the  fire.  If  we  ran  behind  some  year,  we 
did  some  retrenching,  to  be  sure,  but  we  did 
not  lose  our  nerve,  did  not  lose  our  faith  in 
the  future. 

Some  kinds  of  fertilizers  on  the  farm  are 
said  to  make  rich  fathers  and  poor  sons.  The 
way  some  railroads  have  been  run  for  a  record 
you  would  imagine  that  race  suicide  had 
reached  a  point  where  no  further  generations 
were  expected.  One  of  the  gravest  of  our 
mistakes  has  been  the  application  of  the  com- 
parative statement,  regardless  of  its  effect 
upon  our  men.  The  farmer  finds  it  wise 
and  economical  to  arrange  work  for  several 
monthly  men  in  order  to  minimize  the  num- 
ber of  day  hands  for  his  rush  seasons.  In  the 
winter  he  may  lay  them  off,  but  this  is  for 
a  period  sufficiently  long  and  sufficiently  defi- 

133 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

nitc  to  enable  the  farm  hand  to  become  some- 
thing else,  say  a  wood  chopper  or  a  lumber- 
man. Can  we  expect  our  car  repairers,  our 
sectionmen,  to  be  loyal  and  faithful  if  we  lay 
them  ofif  wath  necessary  work  in  sight,  sim- 
ply to  make  our  books  look  better?  They 
know  that  later  on  we  shall,  at  the  last  min- 
ute, at  the  scratch  of  an  indefinite  some- 
body's pen,  put  on  a  big  force  and  with  a 
hurrah,  boys,  rush  it  through.  Is  this  fair? 
Is  it  not  better  to  keep  twenty  men  steadily 
employed  than  to  have  forty  on  half  time? 
The  unquestioned  deterioration  in  the  quality 
of  our  labor,  in  the  morale  of  our  forces,  can- 
not all  be  laid  on  the  union's  doorstep.  There 
is  a  responsibility  here  which  we  cannot 
shirk. 

Cutting  down  expenses  has  been  done  in 
an  unintelligent,  cold-blooded  sort  of  a  way. 
We  go  home  at  night  feeling  good  at  having 
cut  down  our  payrolls.  We  should  be  feel- 
ing sorry  at  the  necessity  for  taking  from 
men  the  wherewithal  to  pay  the  unceasing 
rent  and  grocery  bills.  Our  methods  give 
some  room  for  the  populists'  plea  to  put  the 
man  above  the  dollar.  No,  I  do  not  expect 
ever  to  see  an  entire  correction  of  these  con- 

134 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

ditions.  In  the  play  of  economic  forces  the 
weak  have  to  suffer.  I  beHeve,  though,  that 
through  minimizing  such  suffering  we  can 
improve  the  service  and  earn  bigger  divi- 
dends for  our  stockholders.  Each  of  us  can 
do  a  little;  all  of  us  together  can  do  a  great 
deal  toward  making  the  problems  easier.  As 
the  French  say,  noblesse  oblige — rank  im- 
poses obligation — every  time.  It  is  up  to  us, 
the  educated,  powerful  class,  to  take  the  lead 
and  to  do  the  most.  We  cannot  expect  the 
poor,  unlettered  man  to  work  out  his  own  sal- 
vation unaided.  We  cannot  turn  him  loose  to 
face  an  unequal  struggle.  If  he  fails,  if  he  has 
too  much  time  for  brooding,  society  at  large 
has  an  anarchist  and  we  are  the  losers.  Do 
not  understand  me  as  advocating  the  employ- 
ment or  retention  of  unnecessary  men.  What 
I  am  kicking  for  is  a  better  balanced  system. 
When  we  lay  off  our  extra  sectionman  in  the 
fall,  do  we  give  him  a  pass  and  ask  him  to 
come  to  town  and  work  when  we  put  on 
more  unskilled  winter  labor  in  the  shops  and 
roundhouses?  No,  he  is  in  a  different  depart- 
ment. An  official  or  a  foreman  might  be  put 
to  the  inconvenience  of  waiting  a  few  days, 
of  breaking  in  a  new  man.    Next  spring  there 

135 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

might  have  to  be  a  readjustment  when  the 
work  trains  go  on.  Some  big,  strong  rail- 
road men  are  coming  to  the  front  who  will 
improve  these  conditions  by  working  from 
a  broader  viewpoint.  We  need  more  brainy 
men  with  nerve  enough  to  stand  up  and  in- 
sist upon  a  consideration  of  the  welfare  of 
our  properties  ten,  twenty  or  fifty  years  hence. 
Because  we  need  them  they  will  be  developed. 

Now  do  not  hand  me  the  old  song  and 
dance  about  business  being  cold-blooded  and 
devoid  of  sentiment.  We  spend  money  di- 
rectly and  indirectly  for  advertising  with  a 
view  to  fostering  public  sentiment  in  favor 
of  our  line.  Business  comes  from  an  increase 
in  population,  from  development  of  re- 
sources, from  the  growing  sentiments  of  the 
human  race.  Life  owes  its  origin  to  love, 
which  originates  in  sentiment.  The  family, 
directly  traceable  to  sentiment,  is  the  unit  of 
civilization.  The  way  to  have  our  heads  rule 
our  hearts  is  not  to  forget  that  we  have 
hearts. 

Business  is  so  attractive  because  it  is  chock 
full  of  sentiment  which  can  be  made  an  asset. 
Affectionately,  your  own 

D.  A.  D, 

136 


LETTER  XX. 

HANDLING  THE  PAY  ROLL. 

July  31,  1904. 
My  Dear  Boy: — I  have  your  letter  about 
the  supply  train.  Please  do  not  fail  to  con- 
sider that  it  is  an  inspection  and  administra- 
tive train  as  well  as  a  traveling  storehouse. 
The  term  company  train  perhaps  comes  the 
nearest  to  a  comprehensive  designation.  As 
a  tentative  proposition,  to  be  modified  by  ex- 
perience, I  think  I  would  distribute  one-half 
of  the  expense  of  the  train  to  supply,  the 
other  half  to  inspection  and  consider  both 
halves  as  money  well  spent.  With  the  enor- 
mous growth  of  business,  with  the  increas- 
ing expansion  of  systems,  we  have  had  to 
leave  more  and  more  to  departments.  The 
result  is  that  each  department  becomes  more 
and  more  forgetful  of  the  others.  It  isn't 
enough  to  have  the  heads  at  the  general  of- 
fices take  lunch  together.  Wc  must  begin 
farther  down  in  our  administration  to  keep 
our  departments  in  touch.     Representatives 

137 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

of  the  traffic  department  should  accompany 
the  train  and  distribute  their  own  advertis- 
ing matter.  Perhaps  the  best  feature  of  all 
would  be  the  improved  feeling  among  the 
country  agents  due  to  more  intimate  ac- 
quaintance with  the  operating  and  traffic  offi- 
cials with  whom  they  are  doing  business. 
We  can  afTord  to  compete  with  the  organ- 
izers of  the  telegraphers  and  clerks  for  this 
spirit.  It  will  interest  you  to  know  that  at 
least  two  large  systems  are  figuring  on  a 
company  train.  When  it  comes,  as  come  it 
will,  we  shall  all  wonder,  as  in  the  case  of 
the  telephone,  how  we  ever  got  along  with- 
out it. 

You  ask  if  the  pay  car  should  be  included 
in  the  outfit.  Yes,  if  local  conditions  permit. 
Before  going  into  this  very  far,  however,  let 
us  consider  our  system  of  paying  only  once 
a  month.  Has  it  sufficient  merit  to  stand  the 
test  of  time?  It  breaks  down  in  some  cases 
when  we  wish  additional  cheap  labor.  Many 
of  us  have  turned  over  to  contractors  the  un- 
loading of  company  coal  at  fuel  stations.  The 
avowed  reason  for  so  doing  is  that  the  shov- 
elers  being  often  recruited  from  the  hobo  or 
the  squalid  class,  we  cannot  hope  to  handle 

138 


Letters  From  A  R.\ilway  Official. 

them  as  well  as  a  contractor  who  pays  daily 
or  weekly.  Right  down  the  track  a  little  way 
our  agent  is  remitting  company  money  which 
is  not  earning  any  interest.  Another  reason 
given  is  that  our  officials  are  too  far  away  to 
give  the  coal  wharves  proper  supervision.  As 
a  matter  of  fact  the  official  is  on  hand  about 
as  frequently  as  the  contractor.  This  is  a 
sad  commentary  on  the  versatility  and  elas- 
ticity of  our  organization.  Before  throwing 
money  to  the  contractors  why  not  give  our 
section  foreman  or  our  agent  a  bonus  for 
supervising  the  coal  heavers?  Let  our  men 
be  a  little  interchangeable.  If  a  man  be- 
comes worn  out  from  too  much  sun  on  the 
track,  let  the  breeze  blow  through  his  whis- 
kers in  the  coal  shed  for  a  few  weeks.  No, 
I  do  not  think  the  track  would  suffer  if  the 
section  foreman  had  to  put  the  fear  of  the 
Lord  in  another  gang  of  men.  The  old-time 
section  foreman  had  ingenuity  and  original- 
ity enough  to.  do  many  things.  His  proto- 
type of  to-day  may  be  dwarfed  by  over-spe- 
cialization. When  we  treat  our  men  less  like 
machines  we  can  subdivide  gangs  and  still 
get  results. 

Nearly   every  winter  a  bill   is   introduced 

139 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

in  some  legislature  requiring  corporations 
to  pay  their  men  at  least  twice  a  month. 
Railroads  at  once  get  busy  and  manage  to  be 
exempted  from  the  provisions  of  these  meas- 
ures. Such  resistance  is  based  on  a  variety 
of  arguments,  the  vastness  of  territory  cov- 
ered, the  large  number  of  men  employed,  the 
necessity  for  careful  auditing,  etc.  How  long 
we  can  hold  out  against  the  spirit  of  the  age 
is  a  question.  Why  not  keep  ahead  of  the 
game  and  lead  public  opinion?  At  such  times 
we  become  very  sohcitous  of  the  thriftiness 
of  our  men.  We  claim  that  we  are  their 
benefactors;  that  by  paying  them  so  much 
money  at  one  time  we  are  helping  them  to 
save.  As  a  matter  of  fact  people  who  have 
studied  such  questions  tell  us  that  when  pay- 
ments are  frequent  less  stuff  is  bought  on 
credit  and  fewer  bills  are  run.  Savings  banks 
find  that,  under  certain  conditions,  men  who 
are  paid  daily  or  weekly  will  put  by  more 
money  than  those  who  have  a  monthly  pay 
day.  It  is  an  economic  question,  dependent 
more  upon  sociological  conditions  than  upon 
railroad  policy. 

It  is  usually  pretty  good  business  sense  to 
take  advantage  of  trade  discounts.     Do  you 
140 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

not  think  we  could  make  better  bargains  with 
our  men  if  we  did  not  wait  to  pay  them  until 
we  are  six  weeks  in  arrears?  We  pay  them  for 
only  one  month  and  are  always  in  their  debt. 
Every  once  in  a  while  we  lose  a  good  man 
from  the  service  because  he  is  hard  pressed 
and  can  raise  money  only  by  taking  his  time 
check. 

The  monthly  payroll  was  adopted  before 
bonding  and  surety  companies  revolutionized 
business  methods.  The  theory  is  that  the 
roll  must  be  approved  and  audited  before 
payment  in  order  to  insure  accuracy  and  pre- 
vent fraud.  Did  you  ever  hear  of  a  payroll 
being  disapproved  as  such?  No  matter  how 
unwise  their  employment,  how  injudicious 
the  time  put  in,  the  men  must  be  paid.  We 
are  under  moral  and  legal  obligations  to  pay 
for  service  performed.  Did  you  ever  hear  of 
a  padded  payroll  being  caught  in  the  audit- 
or's office?  The  man  who  stuffs  the  roll  al- 
ters the  data  against  which  the  auditor 
checks.  The  few  arithmetical  errors  discov- 
ered do  not  justify  the  time  consumed. 
Again,  why  should  you  send  your  general 
superintendent  a  payroll  of  names  any  more 
than  you  should  send  him  copies  of  your 
14J 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

train  sheets?  What  difference  should  it 
make  to  him  just  how  much  each  particular 
man  worked?  He  should  have  a  summary 
of  results,  totals,  maxima,  minima,  averages, 
etc.,  just  as  the  mofning  report  gives  him  a 
summary  of  the  train  sheet.  If  he  wants 
more  detailed  information,  let  him  come  to 
your  office  and  examine  the  time  books,  just 
as  he  should  occasionally  go  over  your  train 
sheets.  He  is  furnished  a  car  to  travel  for 
just  such  purposes. 

Assuming  the  desirability  for  more  fre- 
quent payments,  the  day,  the  trip,  the  piece, 
would  seem  the  best  unit.  Railroads  have 
comparatively  few  credit  hsts.  The  ability 
to  force  patrons  to  pay  cash  is  a  business 
asset,  and  should  give  us  the  benefits  of  a 
cash  basis.  Our  present  system  of  payments 
is  slow  and  cumbrous.  In  our  desire  to  guard 
every  avenue  to  fraud  we  have  gone  too  far 
and  retarded  administration.  The  bonding 
company  gives  us  a  check  which  should  en- 
able us,  under  a  proper  system  of  inspection, 
to  have  the  timekeeper  practically  the  pay- 
master. I  confess  that  I  have  not  yet  been 
able  to  work  out  all  the  details  to  my  own 
satisfaction.  I  have  gone  far  enough,  how- 
142 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

ever,  to  be  convinced  that  there  are  men  in 
our  business  bright  enough  to  solve  the  prob- 
lem. When  given  proper  attention  it  will  be 
found  that  for  the  same  or  less  expense  we 
can  pay  daily,  improve  the  service  and  ren- 
der a  better  account  of  our  stewardship  to 
the  stockholders. 

An  agent  remits  daily.  Why  not  let  him 
turn  in  as  cash  a  receipt  or  a  deduction  to 
cover  his  own  pay?  If  he  can  do  this,  it  is 
an  easy  step  to  accept  as  cash  the  time  slips 
of  his  force,  of  the  operators  and  sectionmen 
at  his  station.  The  time  slips  of  shopmen, 
roundhousemen,  yardmen,  trainmen,  engine- 
men,  etc.,  when  countersigned  by  the  proper 
chief  clerk,  should  become  cash  at  a  certain 
designated  agency  or  local  bank.  It  might 
be  found  practicable  to  use  a  form  of  time 
slip  similar  to  a  postal  note  or  a  street  car 
transfer  which  could  be  punched  and  then 
authenticated  with  a  stamp.  An  advantage 
of  this  would  be  that  these  original  data 
would  be  available  for  tabulation  in  electrical 
integrating  machines  in  the  auditor's  office. 
The  plan  followed  in  compiling  statistics 
would  be  similar  to  that  in  use  for  many 
years  in  the  census  office  in  Washington. 

M3 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official, 

Such  a  system  of  payment  presupposes 
fewer  checking  clerks  but  more  traveling 
auditors  and  inspectors.  It  does  things  first 
and  talks  about  them  afterward.  It  is  predi- 
cated upon  the  belief  that  checks  and  bal- 
ances must  begin  to  work  nearer  the  founda- 
tion, that  true  centralization  of  results  de- 
mands a  full  measure  of  local  autonomy. 
Affectionately,  your  own 

D.  A,  D. 


144 


LETTER    XXI. 

MILITARY  ORGANIZATION. 

August  7,  1904. 

My  Dear  Boy : — While  in  Washington  last 
week  I  dropped  in  to  see  some  old  cronies  at 
the  War  Department.  The  iconoclasts  have 
been  at  work  there,  too,  with  gratifying  re- 
sults. The  military  secretary's  office  has 
superseded  the  former  adjutant-general's  de- 
partment. Under  the  new  dispensation  every 
letter  must  receive  definite  action,  not  a  mere 
acknowledgment,  the  very  day  of  its  receipt; 
every  telegram  must  be  answered  within  two 
hours.  An  emergency  request  came  in  for 
some  equipment  for  a  militia  encampment. 
In  three  hours  the  Philadelphia  clothing  de- 
pot acknowledged  the  order,  reported  loading 
and  shipment,  and  advised  that  bill  of  lading 
had  been  mailed.  This  means  better  supply, 
less  suffering,  more  effective  movements 
when  real  war  comes.  It  means  a  saving  in 
blood  and  treasure. 

We  of  the  railroads  are  inclined  to  scoff 

145 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

at  the  slowness  of  government  methods.  Are 
we  doing  as  well  as  the  rejuvenated  War  De- 
partment? Of  course,  when  there  is  a  wreck, 
a  washout,  a  fire,  we  do  some  great  stunts. 
Day  in  and  day  out  we  are  sadly  lacking  in 
promptness  with  our  telegrams  and  our  let- 
ters. The  pulse  of  business  is  so  quick  that 
these  delays  cost  us  money.  The  remedy  is 
simple.  Get  the  departments  in  line.  A  dip- 
lomatic censor  with  rank  enough,  say,  that  of 
assistant  to  the  president,  should  be  able  to 
show  even  the  highest  officials  where  they 
are  falling  down,  where  they  are  duplicating 
work,  where  their  telegrams  have  no  business 
on  the  company's  wires,  where  their  letters 
are  too  lengthy,  where  their  offices  are  lame. 
The  departments  on  a  railroad  correspond  to 
the  bureaux  of  the  War  Department. 

The  Spanish  war  showed  the  weakness  of 
the  departmental  system  under  modern  con- 
ditions. It  has  been  corrected  by  the  creation 
by  Congress  of  a  general  staff,  with  a  chief 
of  staff,  usually  a  general  officer  detailed  from 
the  line,  who,  as  next  in  rank  to  the  Secretary 
of  War,  controls  all  departments,  thus  insur- 
ing unity  of  action.  He  has  help  enough  to 
enable  the  general  staff  to  give  attention  to 
146 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

details.  The  president  of  a  railroad  is  often 
too  busy  and  seldom  has  assistance  enough 
to  hold  his  departments  in  check.  They  do 
not  always  maintain  a  proper  proportion  to 
each  other.  If  he  appoints  a  committee  to 
consider  a  question,  the  tendency  is  for  such 
committee  to  leave  the  transportation  part  to 
its  transportation  man,  the  mechanical  ques- 
tion to  the  mechanical  member  and  the  traffic 
problem  to  the  traffic  representative.  The 
results  of  such  work  are  likely  to  be  narrow 
or  one-sided.  Each  member  should  consider 
every  phase  of  the  matter  and  not  minimize 
his  own  versatility.  Remember  that  the  lay- 
man may  discover  a  radical  inconsistency  in 
professional  practice.  Give  each  man  due 
weight  in  his  specialty,  but  do  not  let  him  be 
absolute.  A  minority  report  from  a  commit- 
tee should  always  be  welcome  as  afifording 
more  information  for  the  parent  body  or  the 
appointing  power.  A  little  careful  considera- 
tion, a  little  lively  debate  on  a  committee  re- 
port, may  be  a  healthy  check. 

While  speaking  of  military  organization,  let 
me  impress  upon  you  that  in  the  army  the 
line  always  commands  the  stafif.  A  stafT  offi- 
cer cannot  command  troops  except  by  ex- 

147 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

press  direction  of  the  President.  Enlisted 
men  and  junior  officers  must  show  a  staff 
officer  the  respect  due  his  rank,  just  as  our 
conductor  is  respectful  to  the  division  freight 
agent,  but  when  it  comes  to  taking  orders, 
that  is  another  question.  A  lieutenant  of  the 
line,  if  he  happens  to  be  the  senior  present, 
may  have  under  his  command  a  surgeon  with 
the  rank  of  major,  a  commissary  with  the 
rank  of  captain,  etc.  Certain  special  work, 
such  as  the  construction  of  buildings,  of  a 
telegraph  line,  of  a  road,  may  be  put  under 
a  staff  officer  reporting  directly  to  headquar- 
ters and  exempted  from  the  orders  of  the 
local  commander  of  troops.  We  do  the  same 
when  we  put  certain  construction  work  under 
our  engineers  working  independently  of  the 
superintendent.  In  an  emergency  all  officers, 
men  and  material  come  under  the  control  of 
the  senior  line  officer  present.  With  us  the 
line  is  the  transportation  department,  to 
whose  senior  representative,  in  time  of  trou- 
ble, usually  the  superintendent,  every  official 
and  employe  of  whatever  department  should 
yield  unquestioning  obedience. 

They  have  another  feature  in  army  admin- 
istration which  we  would  do  well  to  emulate. 
148 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

On  the  theory  perhaps  that  a  cat  may  look 
at  a  king,  the  lowest  may  address  the  highest. 
The  official  ear  and  mouthpiece  of  the  War 
Department  is  the  military  secretary.  He 
may  be  addressed  by  the  lowest  man  in  the 
service,  provided,  that  under  the  address  is 
the  important  phrase  in  parenthesis,  "through 
the  proper  channels."  Unless  the  communi- 
cation is  grossly  irrelevant  or  disrespectful  it 
must  be  forwarded  through  the  channels, 
each  officer  indorsing  his  opinion,  pro  or  con. 
If  it  reaches  an  officer  whose  authority  and 
views  can  give  favorable  action,  it  need  not 
go  higher.  Otherwise,  it  must  keep  going. 
The  reply  comes  back  to  the  man  through 
the  same  channels.  All  this  is  worth  the 
trouble  it  costs,  for,  even  if  unfavorable  action 
is  taken,  the  man  feels  that  he  has  been  given 
consideration;  that  he  is  not  a  mere  machine; 
that  there  may  be  good,  honest  reasons  for 
turning  him  down.  This  strong  effort  to  pre- 
serve individuality  is  the  reason  that  the 
American  people  never  have  cause  to  lose 
confidence  in  the  man  behind  the  gun.  Its 
short-sighted  absence  in  railroad  administra- 
tion is  the  prime  cause  of  our  loss  of  confi- 
dence in  the  spirit  of  our  men.  The  inaugu- 
149 


Letters  From  A  FL\ilway  Official. 

ration  of  such  a  feature  might  cause  our  agi- 
tators to  be  annoying  and  importunate  for  a 
time.  The  greater  the  consideration  shown, 
the  sooner  would  the  agitators  be  laughed  at 
and  discouraged  by  their  comrades.  It  would 
break  up  the  fashion  of  ignoring  the  superin- 
tendent and  running  to  the  general  manager 
with  every  petty  little  grievance. 

If  your  trainmaster  sees  fit  to  make  a  gen- 
eral recommendation,  for  example,  about  a 
train  rule,  provided  he  does  so  through  your 
office,  you  should  forward  it,  giving  your  own 
views.  If  you  happen  to  disapprove,  do  not 
try  to  kill  the  proposition  by  holding  the 
letter.  Under  the  narrow  practice  of  most 
roads  the  trainmaster  would  have  no  redress 
and  would  be  considered  disloyal  if  he 
attempted  to  reach  the  general  superin- 
tendent. 

In  the  handling  of  railroad  papers  there 
are  a  number  of  short  cuts.  There  are  too 
many  letters  written  just  for  the  sake  of  hav- 
ing a  carbon  to  complete  a  file.  If  you  must 
have  a  carbon,  require  offices  reporting  to 
yours  to  make  an  extra  copy  on  the  type- 
writer of  the  original  letter.  Stamp  both 
copies  with  the  office  dater,  and  just  below 

150 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

use  a  one-line  rubber  stamp ;  for  example,  "To 
the  General  Superintendent,"  adding  in  pen, 
if  necessary,  such  words  as  "recommended," 
"disapproved,"  etc.  If  no  special  action  is 
taken,  no  signature  is  necessary,  the  office 
stamp  being  sufficient  authentication.  For- 
ward one  copy,  keep  the  other,  and  in  routine 
correspondence  your  file  is  complete  without 
the  scratch  of  a  pen  or  the  click  of  a  type- 
writer in  your  office.  Certain  classes  of  pa- 
pers referred  to  your  subordinates,  for  ex- 
ample, special  itineraries,  claims,  statistics, 
etc.,  can  be  kept  track  of  by  a  number  system 
in  a  small  book,  without  using  any  carbon. 
Master  the  file  system  of  your  office.  If  some- 
one happens  to  drop  in  for  information,  do 
not  be  put  to  the  mortification  of  explaining 
that  your  clerks  do  not  come  down  Sunday 
morning,  or  that  they  are  all  playing  ball  on 
the  company  nine.  Filing  should  be  uniform 
on  divisions  and  in  departments,  one  general 
plan  for  the  whole  road.  Some  roads  have 
as  many  varieties  as  a  pickle  factory. 

It  was  nice  of  your  friend,  the  chief  dis- 
patcher, to  write  so  strong  a  letter  indorsing 
the  sacredness  of  signatures.  He  is  right; 
most   telegraphic   instructions  on  a   division 

i5i 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

should  go  out  over  the  initials  of  the  chief 
dispatcher.  Years  ago  your  old  dad,  with 
the  title  of  trainmaster  and  the  duties  of  an 
assistant  superintendent,  obtained  smooth  re- 
sults from  the  following  bulletin: 

"Instructions  from  this  office  governing 
the  movements  of  trains,  engines  and  cars, 
and  the  temporary  assignments  of  men,  will 
be  given  over  the  initials  of  the  chief  dis- 
patcher. Messages  concerning  such  routine 
matters  will  be  addressed  to  the  chief  dis- 
patcher. The  idea  is  to  Hmit  the  use  of  the 
trainmaster's  initials  to  cases  handled  per- 
sonally by  him." 

The  men  caught  right  on.  They  saw  that 
it  was  impossible  for  a  man  to  be  issuing  all 
the  instructions  over  the  wire  when  he  spent 
most  of  his  time  on  the  road. 

I  have  long  thought  that  a  train  order 
should  be  as  individual  as  a  bank  check  and 
be  signed  by  the  dispatcher's  own  initials.  I 
am  beginning  to  believe  that  no  signature  is 
necessary;  that  the  dispatcher's  initials,  given 
with  the  "complete,"  should  be  sufficient. 
Affectionately,  your  own 

D.  A.  D. 


152 


LETTER    XXII. 

WRECKS    AND   BLOCK    SIGNALS. 

August  14,  1904. 
My  Dear  Boy: — You  ask  what  we  are  go- 
ing to  do  to  prevent  so  many  wrecks.  My 
various  admonitions  to  you  have  been  in  vain 
if  I  have  failed  to  score  some  points  looking 
to  that  end.  We  must  get  closer  to  our  men, 
improve  their  discipHne,  which  means  also 
their  spirit.  We  must  have  more  official 
supervision.  We  must  pay  division  officials 
better  salaries.  The  minimum  pay  of  a  di- 
vision superintendent,  regardless  of  the  price 
of  wheat,  should  be  $300  per  month  and 
expenses,  with  such  greater  amount  as  the 
importance  of  the  division  demands.  Train- 
masters cannot  be  expected  to  enforce  disci- 
pline and  set  an  example  in  neatness  if  paid 
less  than  some  of  their  conductors  and  en- 
ginemen.  Not  a  bad  rough  rule  for  fixing 
intermediate  salaries  is  to  split  the  difference 
between  the  highest  man  in  one  grade  and  the 
lowest    in    the    next    higher,    and    then    add 

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Letters  From  A  R.\ilway  Official. 

enough  to  make  convenient  even  money.  Do 
not  think  you  are  saving  money  if  you  avoid 
raising  the  pay  of  your  officials  when  you 
raise  that  of  employes. 

Wrecks  are  a  reflection  of  administration. 
Sometimes  cause  and  effect  are  years  apart, 
so  distant,  in  fact,  as  to  be  almost  unrecog- 
nizable. Adversity  makes  heroes  and  the 
more  disorganized  we  find  conditions  the 
more  comprehensive  and  earnest  should  be 
our  efforts  to  seek  the  cure.  Neither  public 
opinion  nor  our  own  self-respect  will  stand 
for  shifting  too  much  of  the  blame  to  our 
predecessors.  Whatever  safety  appliances  we 
adopt  we  shall  never  be  able  to  eliminate  en- 
tirely the  element  of  human  judgment,  we 
shall  never  get  beyond  trusting  somebody. 
Therefore  we  must  train  our  men  to  alertness. 
We  must  build  up  a  loyalty  that  pervades 
every  rank.  Those  roads  have  the  fewest 
wrecks  due  to  defective  equipment  which 
cater  to  the  welfare  of  their  men.  Such  roads 
do  not  expect  a  man  to  live  on  air.  When 
repair  work  is  slack  they  put  their  men  to 
building  cars  and  engines,  taking  advantage 
of  the  low  price  of  material.  If  we  have  to 
operate  so  closely  that  we  cannot  make  such 

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wise  investments  in  influence,  we  are  grading" 
the  way  to  disaster.  We  are  preparing  to 
pay  out  later  in  wrecking,  personal  injuries, 
maintenance  and  renewal  of  equipment,  much 
more  than  the  expense  of  anticipating  future 
needs  by  keeping  our  men  employed  and  con- 
tented. No  amount  of  engine  and  car  in- 
spection can  overcome  inherent  defects  due 
to  careless  workmanship.  Will  the  track 
walker  who  knows  not  when  he  will  be  laid 
off  prevent  as  many  disasters  as  he  whom  we 
find  time  to  tell  in  advance  what  tenure  to 
expect?  We  can  overdo  this  matter  of  run- 
ning our  railroad  too  strictly  in  accordance 
with  the  auditor's  statistical  blue  print.  As 
surgery  the  operation  is  a  great  success,  but 
unfortunately  the  patient  dies. 

We  have  divided  responsibility  sufficiently 
when  we  furnish  both  the  conductor  and  the 
engineman  a  copy  of  the  train  order.  If  it  is 
desirable  for  the  brakemen  and  the  fireman 
to  be  informed,  we  should  furnish  a  copy  to 
each  man  in  the  crew.  What  is  everybody's 
business  becomes  nobody's  business.  Even  if 
it  were  practicable  it  is  undesirable,  this  idea 
of  showing  the  orders  to  every  member  of  the 
crew.     It  would  seem  better  to  have  three 

155 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

different  standard  signals  for  an  engineman 
whistling  into  town;  one  indicating  a  wait 
order  or  a  meeting  point,  either  by  time  table 
or  train  order;  another  indicating  a  passing 
point,  and  a  third  indicating  no  other  trains 
to  be  considered.  The  wrong  signal  sounded 
by  the  engineman  should  cause  the  conductor 
to  stop  the  train  with  the  air  before  the  switch 
is  reached.  Some  roads  now  have  the  engine- 
man  sound  a  prescribed  signal,  after  the 
station  whistle,  to  indicate  orders  to  be  exe- 
cuted. The  objection  to  this  is  that  valuable 
time  may  be  lost  by  the  conductor  before  be- 
ing sure  whether  or  not  he  heard  the  signal. 
A  condition  should  not  be  indicated  in  a 
negative  manner  by  the  failure  to  do  some- 
thing. All  indications  should  be  of  a  positive 
nature,  that  a  positive  understanding  may  re- 
sult and  positive  action  be  taken.  It  may  be 
a  little  hard  to  give  up  the  good  old  long 
blast  for  stations,  but  safety  demands  some 
such  modification. 

The  fad  for  main  track  derails  at  interlock- 
ing plants  seems  nearly  to  have  ditched  itself. 
We  are  realizing  that  it  is  not  necessary  to 
kill  an  engineman  who  runs  past  a  signal. 
The  money  that  such  unnecessary  derailments 

156 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

have  cost  might  better  have  been  spent  in  en- 
forcing discipHne  by  increased  official  super- 
vision. If  main  track  derails  were  proper  for 
an  interlocking  plant,  it  would  logically  fol- 
low that  every  block  signal  should  be  inter- 
locked with  a  derail.  Desirable  as  they  are 
on  auxiliary  low-speed  routes,  it  is  doubtful 
if  derails  have  any  place  in  a  main  track,  even 
at  drawbridges.  We  are  learning,  too,  that  a 
good  derail  can  be  installed  without  cutting 
the  rail. 

Public  opinion  is  aroused  on  the  subject  of 
our  failure  to  safeguard  human  life  in  pro- 
portion to  our  progress  in  other  matters.  We 
must  cough  up  the  money  for  more  block  sig- 
nals. I  say  block  signals,  not  because  they 
are  the  panacea  for  the  evil  that  many  people 
imagine,  but  because  they  are  the  best  safe- 
guard yet  devised.  They  are  useless  without 
proper  discipHne  and  supervision.  The  verti- 
cal plane  coupler  is  not  all  that  can  be  desired. 
Yet  if  modern  equipment  had  to  stand  the 
slack  of  the  link  and  pin  it  would  be  in  a  bad 
way.  The  block  signal  even  with  the  train 
staff  or  the  train  tablet  is  far  from  perfect. 
It  is  impolitic,  however,  for  us  to  hesitate  too 
long  before  going  down  into  our  clothes  for 

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Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

the  coin.  While  waiting  for  the  perfect 
method  to  be  developed  the  perfect  man  may 
be  evolved  and  bump  the  most  of  us  out  of 
our  jobs. 

There  will  be  fewer  wrecks  when  executive 
and  general  officials  have  better  control  of 
temper  and  judgment.  Feeling  in  an  indefi- 
nite way  the  responsibility  for  an  appalling 
wreck,  the  high  official  thinks  he  must  do 
something.  He  butts  in  with  some  ill-con- 
sidered instructions  which  breed  distrust  of 
the  entire  system  of  running  trains,  which 
discount  the  whole  organization.  This  action 
may  result  for  a  time  in  an  abnormal,  un- 
healthy vigilance,  which  is  certain  to  be  fol- 
lowed by  a  demoralizing  reaction.  When  a 
condition,  like  a  man,  gets  the  drop  on  you 
the  only  sane  thing  to  do  is  to  throw  up  your 
hands  for  the  time  being.  Wisdom  consists  in 
looking  for  the  true  prime  cause  of  the  afore- 
said drop.  The  frontal  attack  on  a  buzz  saw 
is  suicidal.     Always  take  it  in  flank. 

When  you  get  your  block  signals,  consider 
the  permissive  block  as  an  abomination  before 
the  Lord.  The  only  block  to  have  is  the  posi- 
tive block  in  both  directions.  If  there  is 
trouble  in  a  block,  let  the  dispatcher  give  the 
is8 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

delayed  train  a  message  to  flag  over.  En- 
courage your  men  to  flag  over,  block  or  no 
block,  against  any  train  on  the  road  when 
common  sense  dictates  such  a  course.  The 
object  of  all  rules  is  to  run  trains  with  safety, 
not  to  tie  them  up  on  technicalities.  Flag- 
ging means  good  flagging,  signals  as  sure  and 
unmistakable  as  fixed  signals.  Some  day  we 
shall  find  time  to  instruct  our  flagmen  uni- 
formly. They  should  all  either  put  the  red 
light  on  the  end  of  a  tie  and  swing  the  white 
light  across  the  track,  or  they  should  swing 
both  lights;  not  sometimes  one  way,  some- 
times the  other.  A  red  light  of  itself  means 
stop.  If  the  flagman  swings  it  he  runs  a  big 
risk  of  blowing  it  out.  In  matters  of  this  sort 
there  cannot  be  too  much  uniformity  for  all 
roads.  Where  we  run  uniformity  into  the 
ground  is  where  we  fail  to  recognize  the  radi- 
cal dififerences  in  individual  characteristics  of 
men  of  the  Atlantic,  the  Pacific  and  the 
prairie  type. 

Realization,  if  not  repentance,  must  pre^ 
cede  salvation.  We  must  save  ourselves.  If 
not,  the  government  doctrinaires  will  under- 
take a  task  for  which  we  are  better  qualified. 
We  cannot  stop  killing  people  to-day  or  to- 

159 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

morrow,  this  year  or  next.  The  problem  is 
not  as  easy  for  us  as  for  the  oft  cited  EngHsh 
railways.  Their  block  signals  are  a  coinci- 
dence, not  a  prime  cause  of  their  safer  opera- 
tion. Much  of  our  mileage  has  only  a  specu- 
lator's or  a  promoter's  excuse  for  existence. 
Much  of  our  traffic  is  so  thin  that  English 
thoroughness  would  put  a  part  of  our  Hues 
out  of  business,  much  to  our  relief,  but  much 
to  the  intolerance  of  the  public.  Until  our 
systems  are  suf^ciently  stable  to  remove  the 
tempting  sign,  "Please  kick  me,"  from  the 
view  of  the  financial  manipulator,  we  cannot 
keep  out  of  the  scrimmage,  we  cannot  build 
up  as  safe  and  conservative  operating  organ- 
izations as  the  English.  We  can,  however, 
do  much  better  than  we  are  doing.  Auto- 
matic devices  will  help,  but  they  are  only  a 
check.  The  balance  lies,  my  boy,  in  develop- 
ing the  human  interest  of  the  men,  high  and 
low,  who  work  for  the  road. 

Affectionately,  your  own 

D.  A.  D. 


i6o 


LETTER   XXIII. 

UNIONISM. 

August  21,  1904. 
My  Dear  Boy : — "What  will  you  put  in  its 
place,  Bob?"  was  perhaps  the  hardest  query 
that  the  brilliant  Ingersoll  had  to  answer  in 
his  assaults  on  the  Christian  religion.  Does 
not  the  same  question  confront  us  in  our  at- 
tacks upon  organized  labor?  We  endeavor 
to  tear  down,  but  do  we  build  up?  This  sub- 
ject, like  the  marriage  relation,  cannot  be 
entered  into  lightly.  It  is  longer  than  a  train 
of  ore  jimmies,  and  broader  than  a  box  vesti- 
bule. It  is  a  bridge  too  close  to  the  track  for 
the  telltales  to  sting  your  face  in  time  to  get 
off  a  furniture  car.  Like  the  ostrich,  believ- 
ing itself  hidden  with  its  head  stuck  in  the 
sand,  we  feel  that  if  we  call  them  committees 
of  our  employes  we  are  not  recognizing  the 
union.  Is  this  consistent?  We  claim,  and 
justly  so,  that  a  high  principle  is  involved; 
that  if  we  recognize  the  union  we  practically 
161 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

force  every  man  to  join,  regardless  of  his  own 
inclinations  and  of  his  freedom  as  an  Ameri- 
can citizen.  This  is  sound  doctrine,  but  its 
application  is  very  faulty.  Our  spirit  may  be 
willing,  but  our  flesh  is  damnably  weak.  Do 
we  give  the  non-union  man  a  show  for  his 
white  alley?  Not  as  long  as  we  fail  to  ques- 
tion the  credentials  of  committees.  We  know 
that  all  their  names  appear  on  the  payrolls, 
at  least  during  the  time  they  are  not  laying 
ofT  and  using  our  transportation  for  organiz- 
ing or  grievance  work.  We  do  not  disturb 
ourselves  to  find  if  they  were  elected  as  em- 
ployes. Did  the  non-union  men  have  any  voice 
in  their  selection?  Not  much;  they  were 
elected  in  the  lodge  room.  We,  in  effect,  say 
to  the  non-union  man  that  the  way  to  the 
band  wagon  is  through  the  lodge  room  door. 
Then  we  are  very  much  shocked  to  find  that 
he,  like  ourselves,  is  following  the  lines  of 
least  resistance.  It  is  so  much  easier  to  run 
with  the  current  of  traffic  than  to  cross  over ; 
it  takes  so  much  less  nerv^e  to  open  up  for 
trailing  points  than  to  keep  our  hand  off  the 
air  valve  when  approaching  facing  points. 
When  a  move  is  made  to  run  out  a  non-union 
man,  we  are  so  afraid  of  being  accused  of 
162 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

holding'  somebody  up  that  we  put  on  the  man 
the  whole  burden  of  making  good. 

Unionism,  like  religion,  and  like  love,  is 
the  outgrowth  of  certain  feelings  and  emo- 
tions in  the  human  breast  that  strive  to  over- 
come the  limitations  of  mankind ;  that  seek 
to  make  an  eternity  of  time,  an  ideal  of  an 
idea,  a  solid  phalanx  out  of  heterogeneous 
parts.  You  may  win  the  strike,  down  the 
union,  hire  your  men  as  individuals;  but 
sooner  or  later,  in  the  Lord's  own  good  time, 
in  obedience  to  natural  law,  they  will  organize 
in  some  form,  under  some  name  or  other. 
Only  a  few  will  stand  out;  some  from  sheer 
contrariness;  more  from  strong  individuality 
of  temperament.  The  outsiders,  from  a  lack 
of  organization,  have  little  positive  influence, 
simply  a  negative  conservatism. 

Since  these  things  are  so,  why  not,  to  drop 
into  familiar  phrase,  be  governed  accord- 
ingly? Instead  of  letting  the  men  organize 
the  road,  why  not  have  the  road  organize  the 
men?  The  system  of  collective  bargaining,  of 
labor  contracts,  has  come  to  stay.  It  is 
merely  a  question  of  how  and  with  whom  we 
shall  deal.  It  is  so  easy  to  let  out  work  by 
contract,  to  call  on  the  supply  dealer  to  help 
163 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

us  out,  that  doubt  as  to  our  own  powers  of 
organization  becomes  habit  of  mind.  We 
farm  out  our  rest  rooms,  our  temperance  en- 
couraging resorts,  to  the  Railroad  Y.  M.  C. 
A.  Where  comes  in  the  company,  whose 
existence  makes  occupation  possible,  whose 
capital  is  invested,  whose  property  is  in- 
volved? 

Do  you  think  we  have  made  effort  enough 
to  let  our  men  organize  as  employes?  Should 
not  all  our  plans  for  terminals  and  headquar- 
ters include  the  excellent  investment  of  a  club 
house  and  assembly  hall?  When  we  have 
tried  this  plan  and  failed  have  we  not  been 
too  easily  discouraged?  Sometimes  the  cause 
of  failure  has  been  our  own  mistake  in  select- 
ing the  wrong  location,  in  deferring  too  much 
to  the  convenience  of  our  own  land  company, 
in  attempting  too  much  official  supervision,  in 
allowing  our  local  officials  to  butt  in  to  ride 
their  pet  hobbies.  Let  us  try  turning  the 
building  over  to  a  committee  of  our  employes 
and  inculcate  a  feeling  of  pride  and  responsi- 
bility. Our  employes  are  a  high  grade  of 
men;  many  of  them  are  nature's  noblemen. 
It  is  true  they  sometimes  worship  false  gods, 
indulge  in  strikes,  commit  violence,  and  re- 
164 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

quire  vigorous  discipline.  Although  mis- 
guided in  all  this,  they  are  usually  honest  as 
individuals.  When  banded  together  there  re- 
sults the  same  tendency  that  exists  in  politi- 
cal parties,  in  churches  and  in  societies,  to 
mistake  their  own  organization  for  the  only 
defender  of  the  true  faith.  This  same  spirit 
plans  religious  crusades,  gains  converts  by  the 
sword  and  destroys  freedom  in  the  name  of 
liberty.  This  spirit  run  mad  breeds  anarchy. 
It  may  result  in  a  condition,  as  with  us  in  the 
strikes  of  1894,  when  cold  lead  and  sharp 
steel  are  needed  to  cool  hot  blood,  when  the 
innocent  have  to  suffer  with  the  guilty.  This 
spirit  is  unreasonable,  but  its  existence  can- 
not be  ignored. 

"Men,"  says  Marcus  Aurelius,  "exist  for 
one  another;  teach  them  then  or  bear  with 
them."  It  is  up  to  us  to  do  more  of  the  teach- 
ing act.  A  prime  requisite  of  a  teacher  is 
honesty.  Let  us  be  honest.  Let  us  either 
recognize  the  unions  outright,  or  else  try  to 
teach  them  that  they  have  not  yet  attained 
full  age;  that  as  yet  they  are  lacking  in  the 
ripe  wisdom  which  permits  of  a  larger  partici- 
pation in  affairs.  Let  us  be  fair  and  tell  them 
wherein  they  are  lacking.     Capital,  from  in- 

165 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

herent  differences  in  nature,  can  never  sur- 
render itself  to  the  absolute  control  of  labor. 
Capital  can,  however,  give  labor,  its  poor 
neighbor,  the  results  of  deeper  study,  of  wider 
view,  of  larger  experience.  It  can  point  out 
the  consequences  of  mistakes  of  past  cen- 
turies, as,  for  example,  the  shortsighted  poli- 
cies of  the  trade  guilds  in  England.  We  can 
teach  the  unions  that  much  more  than  the 
payment  of  dues  should  be  essential  to  mem- 
bership ;  that  they  are  in  a  position  to  demand 
high  standards  of  conduct.  The  unions  must 
learn  that  if  they  would  be  powerful,  they 
must  be  severe  as  well  as  just.  If  they  desire 
merely  benevolent  and  comfortable  care  of 
their  members  they  must  put  away  the  ambi- 
tion for  recognition.  To  be  respected  they 
must  purge  their  ranks  of  the  morally  unfit. 
The  union  must  expel  the  thief  and  the 
drunkard,  as  well  as  the  thug  and  the  ruffian, 
if  justly  discharged  by  the  company,  before 
it  can  hope  to  be  trusted  as  a  judge  of  ca- 
pacity. It  must  learn  that  the  American 
people  will  never  stand  for  the  closed  shop, 
the  restricted  output,  a  limited  number  of 
craftsmen. 

The  failure  of  the  A.  R.  U.  strike  in  1894 
166 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

taught  a  much-needed  lesson.  It  put  many 
a  good  man  on  the  hog  train,  but  it  was  a 
terrible  warning  to  would-be  strikers.  Did 
we  maintain  our  advantage?  Did  we  develop 
more  men  and  prepare  for  the  great  rush  of 
business  the  years  were  sure  to  bring?  Per- 
haps we  did  the  best  we  could ;  perhaps  in 
the  name  of  economy  we  maintained  too  few 
officials.  Perhaps  our  officials  were  so  over- 
worked that  they  did  not  have  time  to  watch 
the  game.  Perhaps  the  situation  got  away 
from  us  because  the  unions  increased  their 
official  payrolls  relatively  faster  than  did  the 
railroads.  Perhaps  the  union  leaders  made 
relatively  greater  progress  than  railway  offi- 
cials in  attracting  the  men  with  insurance 
or  profit-sharing  features.  The  whole  ques- 
tion is  interlocked  with  so  many  side  lines 
that  it  is  easy  to  overlook  a  dwarf  signal  or 
two.  Be  that  as  it  may,  we  lost  our  nerve 
and  shut  of¥  too  far  back  in  the  country  when 
we  got  a  meeting  order  for  the  flush  times  of 
1902.  We  were  so  afraid  the  /other  fellow 
might  make  a  dollar  or  two  if  we  happened 
to  tie  up,  that  we  yielded  the  inch  which  has 
resulted  in  the  ell  of  union  domination.  A 
war,    terrible   as   it   i"^.    mny   result   in    good. 

167 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

There  are  worse  things  than  strikes  to  con- 
template. We  chose  peace  at  any  price,  and 
we  are  paying  the  price.  We  blame  our 
statesmen  and  politicians  for  not  resisting 
union  influence,  for  being  morally  responsible 
for  the  uncompromising  attitude  of  union 
leaders.  Why  should  they  open  our  firebox 
door  for  us  as  long  as  we  fear  to  burn  our 
own  fingers?  The  great  comfort  in  the  situa- 
tion is  that  we  are  beginning  to  wake  up. 
We  have  walked  long  enough  in  our  sleep. 
The  slumbering  giant,  business  sense,  is 
aroused.  The  worst  is  over  if  we  but  do  our 
part.  The  unions  have  come  to  stay.  Their 
extermination,  even  if  desirable,  is  as  imprac- 
ticable as  liquor  prohibition.  We  cannot  sur- 
render supinely.  The  solution  lies  in  wise 
regulation,  in  education,  in  the  inculcation  of 
true  temperance  of  thought  and  action. 
Affectionately,  your  own 

D.  A.  D. 


i68 


LETTER    XXIV. 

i 

THE  ROUND-UP. 

August  28,  1904. 
My  Dear  Boy : — When  you  have  a  confer- 
ence of  your  staff,  do  not  overlook  the  store- 
keeper. Even  if  he  reports  to  the  general 
storekeeper,  he  should  be  on  your  staff  in 
somewhat  the  same  relation  to  you  as  is 
the  master  mechanic  who  reports  to  the  su- 
perintendent of  motive  power.  If  the  man- 
agement, in  the  last  treaty  of  peace,  has 
awarded  the  storekeeper  to  some  other  sov- 
ereignty, be  foxy  enough  to  invite  him  to 
be  present  for  his  own  good.  He  will  not 
decline  to  come.  Then,  when  you  are  dis- 
cussing work  trains;  when  the  master  me- 
chanic figures  out  the  engines;  the  train- 
master, the  crews;  the  roadmaster,  the  men; 
the  chief  dispatcher,  the  working  hours; 
the  whole  arrangement  will  not  fall  down 
from  lack  of  material  which  the  storekeeper 
did  not  know  about  in  time.  Invite  the 
storekeeper  out  on  the  road  with  you ;  drop 

169 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

in  frequently  at  the  storehouse  and  see  if 
you  cannot  help  him  out  of  his  difficulties. 
We  all  have  our  troubles.  Do  not  proclaim 
your  own  inefficiency  and  narrowness  by  writ- 
ing the  general  superintendent  that  your  fail- 
ure has  been  due  to  the  store  department  fall- 
ing down  on  material.  Unless  you  have  kept 
close  to  the  game,  you  may  find  that  you  were 
lame  in  not  giving  sufficient  warning ;  that  the 
stuff  was  loaded  in  time  but  was  delayed  by 
the  transportation  department  waiting  for  full 
tonnage. 

When  you  get  to  be  general  manager,  do 
not  forget  the  general  storekeeper.  Keep 
close  to  him  and  take  him  out  often.  When 
you  become  operating  vice-president,  do  the 
same  with  the  purchasing  agent,  whose  posi- 
tion, like  that  of  the  general  storekeeper,  is 
an  evolution  from  a  clerkship  in  some  general 
office.  Not  all  of  us  have  realized  the  neces- 
sary elevation  of  these  places  to  official  status. 
They,  too,  have  come  to  stay.  They  will  sur- 
vive even  the  awkwardness  of  their  own  titles. 
Would  not  "purchaser"  or  "buyer,"  and  "sup- 
plyman"  or  "supplier,"  be  better  terms? 

Speaking  of  inviting  people  to  ride  in  your 
car.      From   operating  vice-presidents   down 

170 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

we  do  not  avail  ourselves  sufficiently  of  the 
company  of  representatives  of  the  accounting 
department.  They  do  not  and  should  not  re- 
port to  us.  They,  however,  compile  statistics 
from  data  which  we  furnish.  We  want  to 
have  our  data  in  such  good  shape  that  they 
will  not  misinterpret.  As  they  count  our  Aus- 
tralian ballots,  it  is  important  for  us  to  know 
how  to  put  the  cross  opposite  the  eagle  or 
the  rooster.  On  the  other  hand,  the  service 
will  not  suffer  if  we  have  a  chance,  on  the 
ground,  to  show  the  inconsistency  of  some 
arbitrary  requirements. 

I  carried  by  an  idea  in  a  recent  letter.  I 
asked  the  man  on  the  opposite  run  to  take  it 
back ;  but  he,  too,  had  a  big  switch  list  and  a 
time  order.  So  it  has  been  an  over  in  the 
freight  room  until  now  I  bill  it  free  astray. 
The  thought  is  that  our  organization  should 
provide  automatically,  as  in  the  army  and 
the  navy,  for  the  next  in  rank  available  to  as- 
sume the  duties  of  an  absent  or  incapacitated 
official.  A  superintendent  has  to  be  sick  or 
absent  for  quite  a  long  time  before  we  desig- 
nate an  acting  superintendent.  We  let  the 
chief  clerk  sign  for  him,  an  absurd  fiction  if 
long  continued.  Why  should  not  the  assist- 
171 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

ant  superintendent,  or,  if  none,  the  trainmas- 
ter, sign  as  acting  superintendent  as  a  matter 
of  course  when  the  accidents  of  the  service 
take  the  superintendent  off  the  division?  An 
assistant  is  really  a  deputy,  although,  with  all 
our  borrowing  and  mutilating  of  titles,  we 
have  not  utilized  the  comprehensive  qualifica- 
tion of  "deputy."  The  time  is  soon  coming 
when  we  shall  welcome  the  opportunity  of 
making  our  organization  elastic  by  giving 
understudies  the  title  of  acting  so  and  so.  As 
we  grow  in  liberality  we  shall  feel  proud  to 
lend  one  of  our  men  to  another  road  for  a 
few  months  at  a  time  to  do  special  work  or 
to  introduce  some  new  idea  that  he  has  de- 
veloped. The  other  road  will  be  glad  to  pay 
the  man  a  good  salary,  and  he  will  return  to 
us  all  the  broader  and  more  valuable  because 
of  service  elsewhere.  We  have  been  mean- 
time training  another  man  for  any  vacancy  in 
the  grade  that  may  occur.  By  the  sam.e 
token,  we  shall  by  and  by  consider  it  a  privi- 
lege to  get  back  in  our  official  family  a  man 
whom  we  trained  to  our  ways  in  youth,  but 
who  has  been  broadened  by  service  with  dif- 
ferent roads.  We  shall  get  over  considering 
him  as  having  lost  his  rights,  as  an  unpardon- 
172 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

able  offender  against  onr  sacred  civil  service. 
There  is  never  any  affection  stronger  than 
our  first  real  love. 

As  you  master  the  details  of  your  profes- 
sion, as  you  carry  out  loyally  the  policies  of 
your  management,  keep  in  mind  the  possi- 
bility of  radical  changes.  We  shall  not  forever 
keep  up  the  absurdity  of  a  Pullman  conduc- 
tor's snap  and  a  train  conductor's  busy  job. 
When  we  each  own  at  least  the  sleeping  and 
parlor  cars  local  to  our  own  rails,  the  con- 
ductor will  run  the  train  and  perhaps  work 
the  sleepers,  while  a  collector  will  work  the 
coaches  and  chair  cars.  When  oil  burners 
and  automatic  stokers  have  revolutionized 
the  fireman's  duties,  when  train  orders  are 
unknown,  when  the  position  or  color  of  a 
signal  is  the  only  instruction,  we  may  trans- 
fer the  command  of  the  train  to  one  of  the 
men  in  the  engine.  When  we  so  protect  our 
trains  by  block  signals  or  other  devices  that 
to  send  back  a  flag  is  an  absurdity,  our  train- 
men will  become  starters,  and  perhaps  col- 
lectors, with  duties  not  dissimilar  to  those  of 
guards  on  elevated  roads.  'When  the  much- 
needed  motor  car  for  suburban  and  branch 
service  is  perfected,  other  changes  will  come. 

173 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

You  may  not  live  to  see  electricity  displace 
steam  for  heavy  motive  power,  but  you  had 
better  not  gamble  all  your  life  insurance  on 
such  a  proposition. 

The  tendency  has  been  to  limit  all  the  utili- 
ties of  a  railroad  to  transportation.  Before 
long  we  shall,  for  a  time  at  least,  be  going 
to  the  opposite  extreme.  Some  of  us  have 
entered  the  pension  and  life  insurance  busi- 
ness, some  own  coal  mines  directly  or  in- 
directly. Should  we  not  manufacture  our  own 
ice  at  various  points  as  needed  and  cut  out 
some  haul?  Should  we  not  control  the  banks 
in  the  cities  and  towns  where  we  disburse  so 
much  money?  Why  not  grain  elevators  and 
industrial  plants?  Can  we  afford  to  manufac- 
ture relatively  fewer  of  our  own  appliances 
than  that  comprehensive  organization,  the 
Standard  Oil  Company?  These  questions 
cannot  be  answered  easily  or  by  a  simple  yes 
or  no.  They  all  depend  upon  time  and  cir- 
cumstance. Our  trouble  has  been  a  funda- 
mental error  in  reasoning,  a  dogmatic  gen- 
eralization from  too  few  particular  cases. 
Stagnation  is  usually  death  to  business.  As 
we  cannot  back  up,  it  would  seem  wise  to  be 
ready  to  move  forward  in  power  and  influ- 

174 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

ence.  Ours  is  a  high  destiny.  The  raihvay 
officials  of  the  future  will  never  be  without 
knotty  propositions  to  tackle.  They  will  not 
have  to  work  as  long  hours  as  we,  but  their 
problems  will  be  more  intense.  The  injector 
saves  the  drudgery  of  jacking  up  an  engine 
to  pump  her,  but  it  does  not  warrant  sitting 
down  while  waiting  for  the  steam  derrick. 

Through  all  the  improvements,  real  or 
imaginary,  through  all  the  changes  that  the 
years  may  bring,  bear  in  mind  the  human  ele- 
ment. Although  the  race  grows  better  all 
the  time,  the  old  Adam  and  Eve  will  be  ever 
present  in  all  of  us.  High  explosives,  armor 
plate,  modern  weapons,  modify  the  conditions 
of  war,  but  as  the  Japs  and  Russians  are 
teaching  us  to-day  we  can  never  do  entirely 
without  the  individual  initiative,  without  the 
courage  necessary  for  the  hand-to-hand  con- 
flict. Some  may  deplore  this  condition,  but, 
in  the  words  of  the  Salvation  Army  lassie,  I 
thank  God  for  it. 

For  a  period  covering  some  thirty  years, 
beginning  and  ending  over  a  hundred  years 
ago,  an  English  nobleman  and  statesman,  the 
Earl  of  Chesterfield,  man  of  letters,  wrote  a 
series  to  his  son.     The  morals  inculcated  are 

175 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

hardly  acceptable  in  this  better  age.  The 
manners  taught,  the  art  of  pleasing  so  attract- 
ively set  forth,  have  a  value  to-day,  have 
made  the  term  Chesterfield  a  synonym  for 
grace.  Lord  Chesterfield's  letters  to  his  son 
were  collected  to  the  number  of  nearly  five 
hundred  and  published  in  book  form.  He  has 
had  many  imitators,  and  I  confess  to  being 
one  of  them.  Whether  or  not  he  borrowed 
the  idea  from  some  ancient  father  I  have 
never  sent  a  tracer  to  find  out.  Now  that 
you  and  I  are  to  be  near  enough  for  heart-to- 
heart  talks,  my  weekly  letters  will  cease. 
Whether  or  not  they  shall  be  preserv^ed  in 
book  form  it  is  up  to  you  to  say. 

Affectionately,  your  own 

D.  A.  D. 


i;6 


POSTSCRIPT. 

BY  FRANK   H.   SPEARMAX. 

When  a  young  army  officer,  a  West 
Pointer,  resigns  his  commission  to  become  a 
railroad  man  the  unusual  happens  and  ob- 
servers naturally  follow  the  result  with  in- 
terest. Alajor  Charles  Hine  was  more  than 
a  lieutenant  of  the  Sixth  United  States  In- 
fantry when  he  threw  up  his  commission  to 
become  a  freight  brakeman  on  the  Big  Four. 
He  was  even  then,  at  twenty-eight,  a  graduate 
of  the  Cincinnati  Law  School,  a  member  of 
the  bar  and  a  practical  civil  engineer.  Wlien 
the  country  needed  her  army  men  in  1898, 
Lieutenant  Hine,  then  on  the  staff  of  a  Big 
Four  superintendent  in  Cleveland,  secured 
leave  of  absence,  volunteered  and  was  com- 
missioned a  major  of  the  First  District  of 
Columbia  Infantry.  After  Santiago,  Ma- 
jor Hine  promptly  resumed  his  work  as  a 
railroadman.  He  has  served  as  brakeman, 
switchman,  yardmaster,  conductor,  chief  clerk 
to  the  superintendent,  trainmaster,  assistant 
177 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

superintendent  and  general  superintendent. 
He  is,  by  nature,  a  student;  no  task  is  too 
onerous  to  dismay  him  if  there  is  in  it  or  be- 
hind it  something  he  can  learn.  Thus  he  has 
not  only  stored  away  information,  but  he  has 
learned  how  to  impart  it,  and  his  fund  of 
shrewd  observation  and  good  common  sense 
he  has  drawn  on  in  writing  a  railroad  book 
entitled  "Letters  From  an  Old  Railway  Of- 
ficial to  His  Son,  a  Division  Superintendent." 

The  letters  cover  a  breadth  of  ground  in 
railway  operation  that  is  really  astonishing 
to  any  one  who  does  not  know  the  man  be- 
hind them.  This  is  not  all;  loaded  as  they 
are  with  nuggets  of  hard,  practical  sense  in 
railroad  practice,  they  have  a  form  and  finish 
that  make  them  doubly  attractive.  They  are 
short,  compact,  of  an  easy  and  agreeable  style 
and  both  lively  and  humorous  as  well  as  in- 
structive. 

Major  Hine  has  long  since  won  his  literary 
spurs  as  a  contributor  to  the  Army  and  Navy 
Journal,  The  Railway  Age  and  The  Century 
Magazine.  His  present  book  is  bright,  quick 
and  gossipy,  and  it  would  interest  a  man  that 
did  not  know  the  difference  between  a  puzzle 
switch  and  a  gravity  yard,  but  its  especial 

178 


Letters  From  A  Railway  Official. 

appeal  is  to  the  young  railroad  man  of  to- 
day who  understands  that  whether  in  the 
operating  department,  the  accounting  depart- 
ment or  the  motive  power,  he  must,  to  get 
ahead,  know  all  that  he  can,  and  the  letters 
cover  as  many  railroad  subjects  as  they  bear 
numbers.  They  will  take  their  place  at  once 
in  railroad  libraries  and  in  railroad  literature. 
Major  Hine — recently  doing  special  railroad 
work  on  the  staff  of  the  general  manager  of 
the  Rock  Island  system  and  at  present  on  the 
staff  of  the  second  vice-president  of  the  Bur- 
lington, specially  charged  with  the  subject  of 
company  supplies — may  write  longer  and 
more  pretentious  books  than  this;  but  hardly 
one  of  more  real  value  to  the  ambitious  young 
railroad  man. 


179 


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